I was brought up in a family where bluegrass was one of the genres that was played most. My grandpa on my mom’s side had been a square dance caller and an accomplished bluegrass musician. These influences poured over into my mom’s life which then jumped to mine. I have the privilege of having access to my mom’s group of friends that consists of world renowned bluegrass musicians such as Tim O’Brien and Kathy Kallick. Last month Kathy was gracious enough to chat with me about her 30+ years of musical experience, her new album and upcoming west coast tour.
Kathy Kallick has been in the bluegrass scene since the early 70’s. Growing up in Chicago she was exposed to the folk boom during the 60’s and listened to musicians like John Prine. Kathy learned to play music on the piano and began writing songs around 9 or 10. “I decided I wanted to try to write a minuet, so I made up my own and played it for my piano teacher who didn’t like it all and said ‘That’s not why you’re here’. She just wanted me to read music and not mess around [with songwriting].” When Kathy picked up a guitar she began to write songs right away. “The first song I wrote for The Good Ol’ Persons, Just Tonight Pretend You’re Mine, was more like a country song, but that early version of [The Good Ol’ Persons] played all styles of music.” It took Kathy a while to write a bluegrass style song; “it took me about seven years of playing in the band to be able to write a song that sounded like Bluegrass, and I did by following Bill Monroe’s model, by telling my story of a girl growing up in Chicago.” That early bluegrass song is called Broken Tie. It’s very simple but pure Bluegrass.
The bluegrass genre was, and still is to some extent, a boys’ club. I asked Kathy about how being a woman in a male dominated music scene has affected her music and her artistic growth. “My parents got caught up in the folk music world, and the University of Chicago had a folk festival every year that my parents took me and my brother to, so I heard a lot of different styles of folk music. There were not as many women as men there, but there were different samples of [female artists]” she replied. “I then moved to San Francisco to go to college, and I couldn’t find the lively folk scene there. I found a bluegrass bar in the Marina that had bluegrass music every night and I loved the music that was being played.” Although there were women on stage, they were part of groups that were still dominated by men. “That’s how I got into the music and came to understand that [bluegrass] was pretty closed off to women elsewhere.”
The Good Ol’ Persons, an all female bluegrass group that Kathy formed, were among the first female groups to “infiltrate the [bluegrass] scene and claim territory.” Kathy went on to say that a large majority of women in bluegrass had been on the sidelines as members of family bands, i.e. The Lewis Family, The Marshall Family. “[Being on the side] was the way women could preform [that was] acceptable.” The original lineup for The Good Ol’ Persons was all female and seen as a novelty. I asked about how that came about; “Our idea was, wouldn’t it be funny if the five of us went into Paul’s Saloon on jam night and played three songs that just knocked everybody’s socks off. Let’s just really nail three songs!” Kathy went on to say that that strategy worked in their favor. “We went in and then the owner of the bar wanted us to start playing that weekend, but we only had three songs so we said we needed a month to learn more.”
The Good Ol’ Persons performed from 1975 to the early 90’s, with different lineups as the years passed. Between 1992 and 1993 the band started branching off and doing solo projects. They had a huge concert in 1995 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Good Ol’ Persons. Everyone who had ever been in the band came and played. Since then the band has only played a few times over the years as reunion shows.
Kathy has been touring off and on since the 70’s. I asked her what had been the biggest difference that she’s noticed over the years. “So many more women present…one of the exciting changes I’ve been seeing is women doing sound production. It’s always been called the ‘Sound Man’, and now it’s often a woman running the sound. For so long it’s been seen as a man’s job because the equipment is heavy and it’s very technical.”
The closed bluegrass scene that Kathy described was also “not very respectful towards young people. What was respected was men who were in their 40’s or 50’s who had been at this for a while, and those were the headliners. That has really switched, so that now often the most headliners are not just women but young women. Women in their 20’s kind of rule right now, it’s awesome.” Kathy went on to say, “These young people have started when they were little kids and were given the opportunity to devote as much time as they wanted, often really fostered by parents who encouraged them to play music from an early age.”
This topic brought us to Molly Tuttle, a 20-something bluegrass player, who, last year won the International Bluegrass Music Association’s award for Guitar Player of the Year. She was the first woman to ever win! “At the age of seven [Molly Tuttle] was already an accomplished musician. As a teenager she began writing songs and carving out something that was very individual. She was also homeschooled, so she had all this time to devote to this in a way that I think is pretty unusual and a sign of our times right now. I think parents recognize that this is a valuable thing if their child has an interest in it.”
Some young musicians also owe thanks to Kathy’s teaching skills. She teaches several courses on songwriting in California and Colorado. Age ranges vary; “There could be a 15-year-old and an 80-year-old in the same class, and they all come with open ears and enthusiasm.” The genre that Kathy teaches depends on the class. Sometimes it’s bluegrass and other times the genre is open to interpretation. “It’s always acoustic instrumentation – no one comes with their electric piano.”
Kathy recounted a story about a songwriting class she taught in West Virginia that was full of southern rural white men. “I had never taught in that situation. The first couple of hours felt awkward for everybody. These guys didn’t know who I was, hadn’t heard my songwriting, weren’t really sure I had anything to offer them. It turned out to be a wonderful week.”
Kathy explained that she likes her songs to dig deep into personal stories and feelings; it is not all about craft. She needs it to go beyond that. “Towards the end of that week I had to go seek out a roll of toilet paper to pass around to mop up these guys’ faces because they were all crying. They had written songs about their mothers and their family farms. All of them had stories about family members who had been in the Civil War. This was unprecedented for me! One guy wrote a song about his dog who had died and the whole room lost it. These guys were the real deal!”
Inspiration runs swiftly through Kathy’s songwriting classes, but I was curious where else she finds inspiration and what her experiences of collaborating were like. Kathy replied, “I love my current band, they are incredibly inspiring to me. They inspire me to write songs that this band can play, which has always been the case.” Previous bands in Kathy’s history inspired different types of songs for her. It all depends on the people she’s playing with. “This current band is probably my favorite. Everybody has a wide variety of styles they listen to and can play so it’s wide open.”
Kathy’s solo records have given her the chance to do short collaborations with people she normally would not work with, which gives her a lot of joy. Her last solo record, Cut to the Chase, “is all story songs. I thought of that album as a book of short stories…so I had different people playing on different tracks.” One of the people Kathy collaborated with on this record is one of her musical heroes, Clive Gregson, an English musician with an incredible talent for songwriting. At the time Kathy was trying to figure out who could co-write the songs for Cut to the Chase with her. “Clive Gregson was living in the U.S. I said to my husband, ‘What I really wish is that I could get someone like Clive Gregson,’ and he said ‘Well why don’t you get Clive Gregson?’” Kathy brushed off this suggestion saying that Clive would never do that, but her husband encouraged her to ask him if he wanted to, “and he did! He thought it sounded fun to play bluegrass.” Clive and Kathy’s collaboration created new melodies and lyrics that “were so different than anything I could ever have come up with, so different that at times I didn’t even think I could sing!”
The Kathy Kallick Band is currently touring the west coast with their new album Foxhounds. Her band does not tour heavily except during the summer festival season, so make sure you check them out! Get ready to hear some rockin’ bluegrass and see powerful women on stage doing their thang.
Autumn Micketti 