LEARNING THE GRAFT: Kat Eaton Interview

Do YOU HAVE A FIRST MEMORY OF MUSIC, IS THERE A TIME YOU CAN RECALL THAT YOU KNEW THIS WAS SOMETHING YOU WANTED TO DO?

‘I loved music from a very early age, my dad used to listen to loads of different music on his record player. We used to listen every Saturday morning very early we woke up the rest of the family listening to all sorts of music. Some of it was opera, some of it was classical, some of it was old rock and roll records, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Janis Joplin. So, he kind of got me into those kinds of artists.’

‘I’m 37, so at that time I was listening to not-so-great music, I mean The Spice Girls are great, I was in a Spice Girls tribute band because I could do a flip. I definitely enjoyed pop but I had a real affinity for jazz, blues, soul and rock and roll.’

‘Frank White, who’s a Sheffield blues guitarist and singer, he sadly died at the beginning of COVID, was a huge influence for me and my partner Nick Atkinson. He got us our first gig! I remember seeing him in a gig at Victoria Quays when I was in a choir and he was on after us. It was just amazing to hear that kind of music. Frank was the first person I saw live when I was about eleven, to see him kind of oozing with passion and love for music, he had so muhc charisma, soul and music in his bones. Watching him feel the music from his toes to his mouth, every note had resonance with his body rather than simply his chest and I remember at that point knowing that’s the kind of music I wanted to be doing.’

‘Nick asked me to be in his band when I was sixteen, at Silverdale School, and we won a Battle of the Bands competition. We did the first EP at Yellow Arch Studios.’

‘I also remember that my dad got me and my brother a CD player for Christmas one year, I had this new woman CD that had Shania Twain, Sinéad O’Connor, Whitney and Celine Dion. I was trying to emulate all of their voices and just loving the way that they phrased things, the way they used their mouth to create different phonics. I kind of got quite anal and geeky about sound and tone without knowing what it was.’

Are there any artists that inspire your style?

‘There’s a range, so Frank was a big influence, other than that Amy Winehouse, Gregory Porter, Janis Joplin vocally I really loved her, Eva Cassidy. It’s hard because you have artists that inspire your singing and artists that inspire you writing. So, Bonnie Ray I love her writing but it’s country it’s not the same but I love her voice, I love john Mayer, I love a lot of country artists and soul artists. '

‘Mamas Gun and Young Gun Silver Fox - they both have the same lead singer Andy Platt who I have written with and I just really like the music they make.’

‘Emily King, amazing artist I love her, Marcus King too!’

‘Donny Hathaway, Ella Fitzgerald, Arethra Franklin - lots of big hitters!’

‘I’ve always enjoyed vocalists that have quite a low tone, quite rich. I love Tedeschi Trucks Band, Susan Tedeschi has got this gorgeous voice.’

‘Crystal Warren has the deepest voice.’

‘Liz Wright - gorgeous deep tone, effortless way of singing and it’s something I want to try and get into my vocals. I find that I get a bit excited on stage, I need to calm down. She puts so much emotion into one note. I’m into artists that don’t have fancy chops, I’m not massively excited by loads and loads of notes, I just love tone!’

EMMA (interviewer) - I’ve never thought about being inspired separately by writing and vocals’

KAT - ‘Yeah so there’s also production, so three things really!’

What Advice Would You Have For Others Looking To Pursue A Career In mUsic?

‘I’m living off my music now which is amazing but I’m not Beyonce, YET! For me starting out we (me and my husband Nick) grafted, we’ve done a lot of work that we didn’t want to do, we’ve done a lot of covers gigs, hotel gigs, weddings. They’re all enjoyable because you’re still playing but it’s important that you learn your graft.’

‘I find it hard to see people that jump from things like X Factor, there’s a wonderful thing about it but also a really sinister thing because some of these artists never learn their graft. They don’t do those gigs, and they don’t realise just how fortunate they are that they’re in the lime light and they are on national television. But its also frightening because the next day you’re fully famous and you don’t think you deserve it. So, its important, even though you might be feeling like you’re only making 30 quid here or a 100 quid there to do those gigs, graft, earn your trade, start in the pubs go to bars then go to hotels then you can get great residency gigs in London that help you learn your trade, then there’s loads of agents that come along.’

‘Me and Nick were always writing music, always writing things down because that is your currency. It is really hard to be a musician and to rely solely on being in a covers band or being a session musician. This is because you only have a certain amount of longevity, unfortunately in terms of how old you get, it’s really upsetting and it shouldn’t be like that especially for women.’

‘In terms of longevity get into writing very early, like we did, wrote our first song at 16, actually I wrote my first song at 11 about the plague, which was not very cool. But get into writing ASAP, if you enjoy it that has to be the most important thing, you can write for other people you don’t have to write for yourself.’

‘A lot of people are going to cringe at what you like or cringe at the fact that you’re putting yourself aside and syaing that you are going to write an album for example. Even your friends will be like really who do you think you are? You are the only one that will believe in yourself at the start and others will, once they see you get a little bit of recognition - which is upsetting, yes, but it’s the way life is isn’t it.’

‘I’ve done some sh*t gigs where you’re not doing any original material, nobody claps, they put you in a corner where nobody can see you, people come up to you afterwards and say no no honestly that was really good, is this your day job? you should carry on. You just feel like the bottom of the pile, but at the end of the day you always have to be abel to separate those two things, that’s that and this is this, and I believe in this.’

‘There are times when I’ve not believed in it and Nicks picked me up and vice versa. We have a couple of songs on Spotify that have done really well, but the majority of our ability to live off original music, is an accumulation of work, it’s never just one hit, its a back catologue of everything. We have a tonne of music that gets played nationally and internationally, in shops or on the radio and it all adds up royalties wise.’

‘One of the things I’ve noticed as well, only this year for myself because I’ve struggled a lot with my self-confidence especially on stage, this year I’ve turned over a new leaf I don’t know what’s happened. I thought I’m performing for these people rather than for myself, I feel sometimes that its such a selfish act being a musician, or any artist and I feel a bit at odds with that because I’m not a showy person, it looks like it on stage but I’m actually quite reclusive and shy. I had this epiphany on stage where I was like oh no I have to play a game I have to put on an act, I have to be this person in order for the audience to relax. The point of the performance is you’re trying to distract people from the mundanity of life, regular shitty life for 2 hours, you have to perform you have to act and be a little alter ego of yourself because that’s part of the job and then when you perform you can be confident in the alter ego you’ve made. Since doing that I’ve noticed people are so much more engaged and so much more comfortable because they can go oh no she is good because she has conviction in thatfake person that I have made up hahah.’

What IS YOUR SONG WRITING PROCESS LIKE?

‘Me and nick write together and sometimes we write with a third person. It’s normally me or nick coming up separately with something like a chorus or a line or a refrain or something. Sometimes I’ll come up with a verse or a chorus and take it to nick and ask do you like this, and he’ll say yes that’s great or the chorus is a little bit lacking lets work on that together, sometimes I’ve completely finished a song and it’s great and nothing needs to be changed. Sometimes I work with a drum groove, one song I’ve written recently on this new album, I started with a drum groove from a song from the 1960s, I just really loved it and wanted to try something with that.’

‘Often it starts with a lyric or a refrain because the lyrics are the best connection to other people’s brains, response and relatability. Those can sometimes come from conversations in cafés you know you hear someone has misinterpreted a saying, so the saying is kind of backwards but then it sounds kind of interesting.’

‘The main thing as well is I think that a lot of people are nervous about ripping off other artists, I’m nervous about it myself. But one of the things that has helped me in that endeavour is I’ve gone I’m inspired by that song, I want to write something similar to that lyric, I like that from that song, I like that chord structure, drum groove production and putting it altogether makes a completely different song. It’s helpful to know where your influences are coming from because you know if something sounds too similar and needs tweaking.’

‘Sometimes I just sit at the piano, I’ve not got lots of theory knowledge I’m more of a feel writer rather than following chord structures, sometimes that lends to a more interesting song because I’ll change key and not realise I’m doing it. Something I do when I’m writing is, a lot of people do this, is I’ll just sing vowels without any consonants to see what feels nice to sing in what pitch, not marking anything with harsh consonants.’

What’s been the most memorable moment of your music career so far & when did you feel like you were really starting to make your own mark with your music?

‘The most recent thing I’ve done that I’ve really enjoyed has been going over to Germany to do these two festivals with a 10 piece band. It was like having a family onstage because we brought everyone out from England and we knew everybody and everyone loved the music it was so supportive. The second show we did was filmed and out out on national German TV and it was just awesome, I felt like that was a pretty pivotal moment.’

‘Having all those people on stage has been something me and my husband have wanted to do since forever. Ever since seeing Jo Cocker on his Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, where they have this huge big band, horns, percussion, backing vocals, we’ve wanted to replicate that and now that dream has come to fruition. We watched the footage back and cried like absolute sweethearts, I’m very proud of that!’

‘A pivotal moment that started things going was when we got some radio play out in holland with the single The Joker, we released that in 2016 or something and it just did really well. The great thing about that song is that we’d almost finished and given up with writing music, we’d moved to London we were making a lot of money doing covers band stuff we’d signed with an agency, things were going well and original music wasn’t making a lot of money an it just felt like a big pit hole of money. But then a guy came up to us and said he wanted to manage us and wanted to give us thirty grand and we were like fantastic, that will help us make an album. We started writing an album, but the man was telling us how to spend that money and it was in all the places we didn’t believe in. So we were like no no this is all wrong and it had started to feel a bit dodgy anyway. Turned out he was a bit of a cheeky bugger and he was stealing money from one person and giving it to others, so we would probably never have seen that money. Anyway, we wrote s ong about it and that song is The Joker!’

IF YOU HAD TO BUILD YOUR OWN FESTIVAL LINE UP WHO WOULD YOU WANT TO BE THERE?

-            Jo Cocker and The Mad Dogs and Englishman

-            Tedeschi Trucks band

-            Amy Winehouse, please

-            Emily King

-            Myself, I want to play

-            Bonnie Ray

-            Arethra, definitely Arethra

-            Joni Mitchell, of course need to have Joni

-            Gregory Porter

-            Lucy Silvers

-            Miles Davis

-            Art pepper

-            RAYE, I love RAYE, I would love to see her live.