Basic Folk 119 – Katy Kirby

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Raised outside of Austin, Texas, Katy Kirby grew up homeschool, enamored with Jesus and was rocking out to Christian Contemporary Music from the late 90’s and early 2000’s. BUT THEN: she went to college in Nashville and her world opened up. She started questioning everything she believed about God and the church. She fell in with a crowd of musicians who were going through similar situations. She had a lot to let go of when it came to her high school education. Her parents sent her to a private conservative Christian high school. Once she was out of it, she realized how backwards her education was: how racist and close-minded the experience had been. She began writing her way to an understanding. She calls that time “the weirdest and one of the darkest experiences that I’ve had – trying to rewire my brain to not have a loving God that’s ever-present in it.”

She fondly looks back on her experience of learning how to play music in the church. She was 13 years old and playing bass for the first time in the church band where she was the youngest person by 25 years. The relationships formed with the adults in the band were fundamental, especially in introducing Katy to the world of secular rock and pop music. The music of Peter Gabriel, Led Zeppelin, Sufjan Stevens all came to her through the other members of the band. Her debut album Cool Dry Place really relied on her intuition to figure out what worked best for the songs, she talks about how that experience impacted her confidence. The record is rad and I think her intuition is spot on. Keep following it, Katy!

Katy’s official video for “Traffic!”

Katy’s debut album