The most memorable American roots music -- be it western, country, folk, rock or the blues -- is always informed by a simple fact of life: you live and you learn. Just ask Katy Moffatt. Or better yet, listen to her sing, be it a song from her own prolific pen or a choice cut from a favorite songwriter. It's clear that Katy sings and writes with the voice of hard-won authority. As BAM observes, "She doesn't just hit the notes and get the words right, Moffatt evokes the emotions behind the tunes and meaning between the lines."
On Cowboy Girl, her special project for Western Jubilee Records/Shanachie Records, Katy approaches the genre of Western music with a clear and confident step. Her intrepid guide and producer, David Wilkie of Cowboy Celtic says, "It's only natural that a daughter of Texas would explore the roots of cowboy music at some point. I've been waiting a long time for Katy to share her vision of this music, and that time is now." To facilitate this task, Wilkie assembled a tight acoustic string band with legendary Texas guitarist Rich O'Brien, Denver stand-up bassist Mary Stribling, and Katy on her old Martin D-28, with David contributing mandolin and guitar. "The music herein," Wilkie assesses, "is direct, simple, and honest, and that's how we like it out West!"
According to Ft. Worth, Texas, native and current Los Angeles resident Katy Moffatt, this record is "a dream I'd had for many years." When in July 2000, a Colorado Springs gig and visit with Scott O'Malley of Western Jubilee coincided with a Cowboy Celtic gig in the area, Katy was reunited with her old friend and musical cohort, David Wilkie. As she says, "I suddenly knew that there could not be a more perfect producer or record company for this album. The dream was within reach." Everyone agreed, and Cowboy Girl became the first female addition to the exclusive Western Jubilee roster.
Debuting in 1976 with Katy on Columbia Records, Moffatt has continued to grow and expand her own artistry, so effectively that November 2002 saw the reissue of her first two Columbia albums, Katy and Kissin' In The California Sun, on compact disc. Hers is a career marked by consistent critical acclaim, industry appreciation (a 1985 Academy of Country Music nomination as Best New Female Vocalist), movie appearances (Billy Jack, Hard Country and The Thing Called Love), songs being covered (by such talents as Hoyt Axton and Janie Fricke), and an album that outsold Garth Brooks on the U.K. country charts (The Greatest Show on Earth a.k.a. The Evangeline Hotel, which stayed on those charts for six months).
But then again, Katy Moffatt has been learning her lessons well ever since she first became enthralled with music as a child growing up in Ft.Worth. Captivated by Broadway show tunes, the Beatles, and Motown, she was such an avid listener to Top 40 radio that "I used to come home from school, have dinner, go to bed, and set the alarm for midnight. Then I'd get up and do my homework and listen to the radio. It was my favorite time -- I could be alone with the music." This she recalls in Midnight Radio, the title song of her lauded second Watermelon Records release, which was preceded by the Gavin Americana Chart success Hearts Gone Wild.
By high school, she was absorbing Tom Rush, Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen (whose "Dress Rehearsal Rag," Katy says, "made me want to perform.") Later, Tracy Nelson and Ella Fitzgerald, (whose version of the Cole Porter gem, 'Miss Otis Regrets' would later inspire Katy's brilliant acoustic adaptation of the song on 1998's Angel Town) became vocal touchstones for Moffatt, who recalls that "as soon as I started performing, I knew. But there weren't many places for a young girl like me to perform." Early gigs included a small Ft. Worth coffeehouse, an old folks home (where her audience included Willie Nelson's grandmother), and a Neiman-Marcus fashion show with a then-trendy folk music theme. During her college years in Santa Fe, she sang with blues and jugband groups and in her "one and only musical" (The Fantastiks), and was cast as a folksinger in Billy Jack. After college, she spent time in Austin opening shows for the likes of Jerry Jeff Walker and Willis Alan Ramsey before landing in Denver, where she was eventually discovered by Columbia Records.
Her two Columbia albums Katy (produced by Billy Sherrill) and Kissin’ in the California Sun won rave notices from Rolling Stone and Newsweek, but the ever eclectic Moffatt found herself caught in the crossfire between country and pop divisions of a large corporate record company. "I started six albums, finished three, and two were released," she recalls. "I often had marvelous opportunities and no way to maximize them."
A move to California in 1979 landed her within a burgeoning community of like-minded country rockers, and after recording another unreleased album (whose three single releases earned her the ACM nomination), Moffatt appeared on the groundbreaking A Town South of Bakersfield compilation amid kindred spirits such as Dwight Yoakum and Rosie Flores. Three new film offers had her cast as a singing performer in Hard Country (with Michael Martin Murphey), Honeymoon in Vegas, and Peter Bogdanovitch’s The Thing Called Love. Sessions with Steve Berlin of Los Lobos yielded the album Child Bride, whose European release spurred Moffatt’s growing popularity on the Continent. After meeting Tom Russell and his guitar playing sidekick Andrew Hardin at the Kerrville Music Festival in Texas, she began an ongoing songwriting relationship with Russell, and recorded Walkin' On The Moon with Hardin, her first US album release in over a decade (on Rounder in 1989), and hailed as "substantive in both its emotions and its ideas" by the San Jose Mercury News. Rounder followed it with the Stateside issue of Child Bride ("American songs delivered with full-throttled passion," noted The Washington Post) in 1990; The Greatest Show on Earth in 1993 ("One 'Greatest Show' well worth catching," said The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) prompted legal action by the Ringling Brothers circus, predicating a name change to The Evangeline Hotel, but by now Moffatt had reclaimed her place as one of America’s most honest and affecting singer-songrwriters. As the Detroit News and Free Press notes of Moffatt's songs, they "provide stirring, poignant and incisive glimpses into the lives of the long-suffering everyman and woman who once populated Springsteen's scenarios -- except with a dusty Southwest spirit."
On her 1999 Hightone Records album, Loose Diamond, Katy teamed with labelmate and Grammy winner Dave Alvin as her producer for the first time. Together, they crafted a collection of songs to convey all the power and soul in her voice in a direction clearly aimed at a roots country audience.
In recent years, Moffatt has been able to enjoy a career that's become as broad as her varied interests. In early 1996, Rounder issued Sleepless Nights, her collaboration with fellow singer-songwriter Kate Brislin, and later that year she was heard duetting with the late Country Dick Montana on his posthumous solo album, The Devil Lied To Me. She also contributed a track to the acclaimed songwriters' tribute to Merle Haggard, Tulare Dust; did time in The Pleasure Barons with Montana, Dave Alvin, Mojo Nixon, and John Doe; and in 1992 released Dance Me Outside, a duet with her brother, Nashville songwriter Hugh Moffatt.
Now, with the release of Cowboy Girl, Katy Moffatt travels an old and dusty trail, one perhaps more deeply rooted in her than any she has travelled before. In the words of poet Paul Zarzyski, "... she sticks to each note, spurrin' pretty out into the purple sage and leaving us listeners dazzled by the soulful vistas across which her voice ranges with ease, with grace, with a gritty musical savvy that turns us into believers."
Thus, Katy continues her unique path, cutting through to a place where the honesty, power, and purity of her sound reside and flourish like a wild rose.
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Assuming Katy reads this... Hi Katy, I remember you from many years ago. In the '80s I was Hoyt's photographer and I met you a couple times while I was with him. Once, at his home and once at one of his gigs in San Francisco where you performed. I also saw you perform on upper Grant Ave. I believe it was at the Savoy Tivoli. I took some photos of you at the earlier gig and gave you one from that show, after your set. To me you were always one of the most beautiful women in the world...still are. Such a wonderful combination of beauty of sight and sound. I just hope all is well with you and I have enjoyed you much over the years from the first album to present. All the best to you...John
