Her voice is instantly recognizable. When she popped up during the Sydney Festival opening night as apart of the Ruby Hunter tribute, it caught me by surprise. But in reality it shouldn’t have been. Strong female singer/songwriters respect one another on a different level to male musical peers. “ I remember meeting her at an ARIA awards because we were both signed to the same label at the time. And they were pretty much the only real people in the room I wanted to talk to! Ruby was the first indigenous female artist signed to a major record label so she was a real pioneer in many ways and certainly Archie (Roach) and Ruby influenced my music.”
Her latest band The Captains release their debut record last year, Emperor’s Box. A return to her pop/rock roots similar to that of her more well known band george. About to hit the road for their fifth tour supporting the album, Katie is looking at this tour as “a closing of the chapter for this project.” Her next step is to return to her “side project fit in other projects.” Elixir.
“ We’ve got eleven new tunes ready to go. We’re recording in April. We’re working on a world première collaboration for the Brisbane festival in September which is going to be awesome. These new Elixir tunes being choreographed by this choreographer from America with a dance company of five.” A concept Katie is keen to move into where music is the backdrop to other artistic endeavors. That is of course, in between all her other musical outlets and being the mum to two young boys, with her eldest Dexter displaying some musical talent of his own. “ Dexter is an amazing drummer!” she enthuses over the phone. “ I think it is because they don’t spend time in front of computer games and television [it makes them] deeply creative people.”
As for The Captains, after this tour, where does the future lie? “Our guitarist Cameron, moved to India for a couple of years. It’s still my main project but it’s slightly on the back burner on the creative front because it’s going to be a little hard to rehearsals when he’s in India!” The next record may take on a more Bollywood flavour which Katie doesn’t seem to mind too much as long “ as we did a bollywood film clip. That would be hilarious!”.
What will be for certain is that we won’t have to wait to long to hear her amazing voice come through our radios and our iPod speakers. “ I just want to keep on building up mad, exciting ideas and try to make them happen.”
