[Cover photo credit to Tracy Watts]
Singer/songwriter Katie Oates has been in a vocalist in a wide variety of music genres (Classical, Folk, musical theatre, Blues, Jazz, Country, spirituals/sacred) in many settings, from church choirs, to a choir formed for unhoused people, oratorios, theatres of all sizes, bars, festivals, conferences, house concerts and listening rooms.
For her 5th album to be released in 2024, Edge of a Hurricane, Oates recorded an album of original songs with a wide variety of song styles.
Oates shares some difficulties she faced along the way:
It’s been 7 years since I’ve released an album of original songs. I wrote a few songs after I released Play Me, but then I just stopped writing. I kept asking myself : ‘Why does it matter?’ It felt like such a precarious time to be creating. Hate and outrage swarm all around us: on social media, at community meetings, during family meal times — even driving down the interstate. As an artist, it’s hard to know how to respond. Some days I feel angry and despairing ; other days I look around and remember all the wonder and good in the world.
The breakthrough came in 2022 when Katie Oates’ friend and mentor, Grammy nominated singer/songwriter Sally Barris, said to her: “You’re going to start writing songs again.”
Oates explains:
Sally played Kate Wolf’s song ‘Across the Great Divide’ and said to me: ‘now write a song using a metaphor from nature that captures how you are feeling’. I hung up the phone and wrote the first verse of ‘Reason Enough’ — the lead off song on my new album — as if I was taking dictation. Watching a bird outside my window sing its heart out became my ‘reason enough’ to sing my own songs again. It’s a fitting metaphor for me because whenever I get really low, nature reminds me how small my or the world’s troubles are compared to its vastness. Nature also reminds me that small things matter; they affect the universe too. And it encourages me to keep going.
As for the themes on the new album, they are wide ranging, but Oates hints:
The most hopeful ballads on the album (‘Heart of My Heart’, ‘Love Will Find a Way’, ‘Edge of a Hurricane’) and the jazzy (‘Shoo Be’) all emerge from my hard – fought battle with despair. Because in the end I think it’s as simple as a choice we each have to make between darkness and light. Hate seems so powerful, but a ll hate can do is destroy; only love can create something new. So I choose love. I hope you will, too. And maybe our small little acts will make a difference.
