KAT GOLDMAN and KEVIN HEARN at HUGH’S ROOM (2261 Dundas West), Tuesday (April 10), 8:30 pm. $20-$25. See listing.
Folk-pop songwriter Kat Goldman had a brush with success in the early 2000s following the release of her debut album, The Great Disappearing Act.
But her sophomore recording was delayed after she was seriously injured in a freak accident in 2004 – a car drove through the window of a bagel shop while she was in the store. The resulting album was 2007’s Sing Your Song, a powerful piano-pop ode to resilience.
A few years ago, Goldman decided to leave her native Toronto to go to school in Boston at the age of 39. Now in the third year of a B.A. in English literature at Boston University (she also took some courses at Harvard), she’s a self-described “brown nose” getting straight As and on the Dean’s list. Her third album, Gypsy Girl, explores her journey to Cambridge and the Harvard boys who walk past her door. It also returns her to her more acoustic, folkier roots.
Why did you decide to relocate from Toronto to Boston? What did you bring with you?
I put all my stuff in storage and came down here with a bag of summer clothes, my dog, a vacuum cleaner and my guitar and took a sublet that had cockroaches. Then I was like, “I want to stay here. I’m going to stay!” I found another apartment for a year and the rest is history. (Last summer I went back to Toronto, called 1-800-Got-Junk, and they came to my storage unit and took everything away).
I had lived in Boston for a couple years in my twenties so it was kind of familiar to me. After that horrible accident in Toronto, I was really feeling like I had to get out. I even had a therapist say to me that she read somewhere that people who go through a trauma heal better if they move away from where the trauma took place. That confirmed to me that I needed to get out and start over somewhere else in order to move on with my life.
At the same time, I had been slugging it out as a songwriter for many years in Toronto and I just sort of felt like there was more to life. I had wanted to go back to school for many years because I never finished my B.A. in my twenties. That was always kind of hanging over me. Boston felt like the most accessible place for me.
Were you surprised when you started writing about your new life in Boston and going back to school?
That evolved organically. I didn’t think, “I’m going to write songs about Boston now.” The songs all seemed to be about running away, trying to find a new home and going back to school. Sort of this anxious feeling of always wanting to run away but at the same time get settled somewhere new.
The song Gypsy Girl, funnily enough, was written in Toronto four or five years ago. That was one of the first songs that came out for this record. Then once I got here I started writing more songs about the Boston end of things. It follows the whole journey. One song, World Away, is about the struggle between two identities: that of a songwriter and a new student being back at school.
I don’t know if it was moving to a new place that shook up my songwriting or if it was also going back to school but I feel a shift in my songwriting on this record. I finally got to a place where I felt comfortable with my writing, I think maybe because I’m a little older now. (I just turned 41). I have more confidence in my writing.
Sing Your Song was more piano-based while this album has only a couple piano songs on it. Why?
There was a real shift back toward guitar for me on this record. Again, it was just very cosmic. It wasn’t intentional, but a lot of the songs ended up getting written on guitar. Which was nice for me because it brought me back to a time when I started playing guitar and started appreciating really old Bob Dylan songs, old folk ballads and stuff like that. Things just started to open up for me on the guitar for this record. It’s very acoustic-guitar driven.
Why did you decide to record in both Boston and Toronto? And how did that work out?
The original idea was to get it done in one summer in Toronto. I went into the studio with Maury [LaFoy] and we recorded everything. But half of the record was not sitting right with me. I was kind of surprised because Maury and I had really hit it on the head with Sing Your Song.
I had to go to Boston for school and I found a producer here [Adam M Rothberg] and just continued to work on the songs from a more acoustic angle, which was kind of the sound I was going for. I wanted a folkier sound. There is a bit of a sonic difference between the Toronto recording and the Boston one. Fortunately in the end I think it blended together okay. But it was so perfect because the songs were about just that: the struggle between Toronto and Boston. In the end we decided to use half of what we did in Toronto and half of what I did in Boston.
That album promo video on your website is really funny.
You want to know a little secret? I’ve started to make a mockumentary about my life in the music business. It’s going to be like Spinal Tap meets Bridget Jones but about a woman singer/songwriter desperately trying to make it in the music industry and failing miserably. Every which way I turn I’m just tripping over patch cords or making mistakes or playing a gig at Loblaws. It’s very lo-fi and low budget. I’m hoping to maybe turn it into a one-hour DVD. There will be interviews with me and scenes based on my real-life experiences, like when I had a gig back in the day at Loblaws playing Simon and Garfunkel covers to people in the produce section.
You refer to your “golden years” on this album. What do you mean by that?
I had my so-called “lucky break” in 2001 or 2002. I was somehow discovered by a New York manager – he managed Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, Dar Williams – and I was just beyond myself. I was like, “Oh my god, this is it. This is my lucky break.” They flew me to New York City and started getting me gigs in all of the best venues in Manhattan. I played just about everywhere. They were trying to shop me to a record company but this was around the time that the music industry started to crash and A&R guys were not signing artists so freely any more. So Ron Fierstein, this manager who had sold millions of copies of Suzanne Vega’s record in the 80s, couldn’t get me a record deal. I look at that time as my golden years because I loved New York City. I was meeting the most fun people, hanging out late at night, going to bars, crashing on people’s sofas in Brooklyn. It was a really fun time in my life and it was before my accident.
You seem ambivalent about playing shows and touring these days.
That’s very true. I don’t always enjoy playing shows, to be honest. Whereas around those Golden Years I would have hopped on a plane and gone anywhere, I think I’m a little more settled now. More of a homebody. And my wish for my music at this point – maybe this is a copout – is for other people to cover my songs. Maybe I’ll feel differently when I’m done school.
I think after my accident I became very protective of my physical energy and didn’t want to schlep out to places to tour and have bad experiences or slug it out or whatever. I’ve become a little pickier that way.
I’ve had a lot of luck getting songs in TV and movies for TV so that’s been really great for me. Kenny Hotz (of Kenny vs. Spenny) started his own series this year and used a version of one of my songs [Annabelle] to end the show. That was great exposure for me.
