My Recommendation: Kate Earl

This week I’m gonna mellow it down, my wife always says that I do not listen to music rather what I listen to is noise, this week I’ll try to change her mind and all the recommendations this week are dedicated to her.

On that note today’s recommendation comes from Chugiak, AK by Kate Earl though she now resides in LA, born to Filipino and Dutch / Welsh parents, she grew up in Alaska playing piano since the age of four, singing in her church choir, and moved to LA in 2004. She writes most of her songs on a $50 toy piano, and the results in my opinion are just mind blowing, I think it has a lot to do with her vocal talents, but this definitely is a slap to the artists who can’t do anything without a multimillion dollar recording studio, here’s what she has to say about this

“I travel with one because it’s light and easy, because it can get quite expensive and complicated and also damaging to your instruments to check them, and basically I tend to be all or nothing, And the proof seems to be in the pudding for me for a great song, if you can play it on a crappy instrument and have the potency of an entire song. So it’s a litmus test for me to write on that.”

The song I’m recommending, Melody, comes from her self titled second album, I think it’s one of the sweetest songs ever, I love the simplicity of the composition and the honesty of the lyrics, and I can go on and on about her vocals, but let’s read what she has to say on how the song came about,

“Melody was a breakup song. I was on this crazy journey. I was stuck in a catch-22 with my other label. They wanted me to make a new record, and I wanted to go in another direction. They were supportive, but they didn't quite understand what I meant. I said, "I want to go down to the south and I want to find Gnarls Barkley." They were like, "What? You made a folk record the first time. What does that have to do with you?" I just had to go and make it. I was on a plane, and I'd just broken up with this guy I'd been with for two years. I ended up in the South and I came to that producer Ben Allen. He engineered Gnarls Barkley and produced Cee-Lo's solo work. He asked me, "What's your songwriting process?" I said, "I just live in music. It's in my head all the time; it's around me. Whatever comes to me I just talk to. It's conversation." He said, "You should expand on that." I read him what I had for "Melody", and I was like, "I still don't know what to put here. What should I say that's inside my head? How else should I describe what I'm humming?" He said, "Keep it how it is, it's great!" I was trying to figure out the chorus and I realized the chorus really was the melody. I do find myself in the "Melody", so to speak. The track wrote itself in a way.”

I’ll throw in a piano version of the song along with a live performances, do checkout the Facebook Feed for a delightfully candid interview, here’s the song