For Kat Parsons, music has a lot to do with being alive. “I came out of the womb singing,” laughs the LA-based singer-songwriter whose voice — lyrical and vibrant, sexy and gutsy, athletic and warm — draws you in from the get-go. “The music and the living, they’re not separate things.” Born in Vienna and raised in a musical family in Maryland — “When the grandfather clock chimed, we all harmonized to it.”– Parsons uses her voice to articulate life being lived.
From Brunei to Boise, her authenticity resonates from the textures of her life woven into the fabric of her music. The lyrics are hands-on experiential — There’s only so much you can change; honest to the core — Isn’t it funny how nothing makes sense ‘til it does; laced with wondering — Is there a way I could see things differently; and confident enough to notice that Standing Still (a track from her 2005 fan-financed CD, No Will Power) lets you explore the contradictions swirling about. Embracing both the bigness of life and its intimacy, Kat Parsons is equally charged making music live on Japanese radio and singing 80s tunes to her infant nephew.
A little bit zen, a little bit playful, Parsons’ music balances on the dicey line between reality and fantasy, on the frontier that births imperatives, exclamations, affirmations. Instead of running from the duality of that place, Parsons mines it. We are not all born to sing the same melody, she muses in Differently, a track on her Talk to Me EP. And in that moment, her self-awareness opens to the camaraderie of other voices in the human twine.
Thinking Through, a track on her recently released EP, Talk to Me, the first of three EPs recently released, traces the dizzying loops of the mind-traps humans set for themselves. On the EP’s eponymous track, Parsons echoes the pain of bursting at the seams to find out what it means. In Oh! the next EP, she makes the leap — let’s not be scared and let’s choose love — and in that process, finds herself amazed. Sometimes life is better than fantasy, she sings on the Love Changes Everything track. In the achingly beautiful I Won’t Ask, a track on It Matters to Me, the third EP in the series, Parsons, paired with a tender piano-and-strings accompaniment, touches on unspoken knowing and soulful yearning. In One Day, she comes to the heart of a personal proclamation: There are no mistakes in love.
“Or in life, “ she says. “Even if you love the wrong person or can’t find your way to that dream, or have the wrong dream, or fail at every turn, there’s something gained in all that, something learned. It teaches me about who I am… I live with disappointment, but I don’t feel regret. I just go for it. If you don’t risk, there’s not much to talk about.”
Parsons lets music frame the conversation. Sometimes the lyrics come first – “I write down things I want to say. Sometimes it’s just a seed, or I have an experience I want to express.” Sometimes it begins with the music. “If I’m in a certain mood, I’ll play (guitar or piano) and sing along with just syllables, or I’ll try a different rhythm. Or I’m feeling a certain way, and I just start singing. Or the music is like a piece of clay and I chisel at it for a while and make a form.”
The contour of Parsons’ extraordinary career as an indie musician is that of a gifted artist engaging with the world. She ventures into territories like love and loss, awe and discovery, conflict and growth. She’s performed on four continents, on TV, radio, the Web. She’s been featured in print venues as diverse as the Boston Globe, Billboard, and The Onion. In two successful crowd-funding campaigns, her fans contributed nearly $40,000 that funded her recordings.
“I’m trying to make peace with the dissonance – the idea of what life could be vs. what life is,” she says about why she makes music. “You’re in your life and it’s day-to-day, and it’s not romance, despite the fairy tales we are fed. I don’t have the power I thought I would have as a singer-songwriter. You can’t stop world hunger by yourself. Maybe the power comes from smaller things. It comes from kindness and love…a smile, encouragement. My mission is to reflect back to people the beauty I see in them…and the way I can do that is to be committed to being who I am. In this way, I hope to allow others space to be themselves.”
No holds barred. Kat Parsons is grounded in truth telling. She wrote on her blog about the irony of losing her cell phone just before Talk to Me was released and put out a YouTube blooper that captures her falling backwards into the bushes during the shooting of a Talk to Me video. Music is the syncopated landscape that fuels her humanity. Music is the geography where she stretches herself, daring to be a fool in love, a plucky sage of the heart, a dreamer of dreams. Music is also her conduit to community. “I want people to feel a shared experience in my music. Connections are so important to me,” Parsons says. “I love it when people sing along with me.”
When Kat Parsons sings about life being lived, you can’t help but recognize your own story in the lines. An intrepid spirit in music as in life, she reaches deep and wide and leaves you exhilarated, comforted, understood. Connected, in a very human way. In an era anesthetized on spin, Parsons is distinctively real. Her music, irresistibly beautiful. Not unlike breathing.
Written by Bernadine Clark