COVER: Raising the curtain

After working her magic on the sidelines, Montrealer Katie Moore returns to centre stage with a gorgeous new solo record, Montebello, famous friends in tow

PREDATOR AND PREY: Katie Moore—singer, songwriter and Purple Cat Records GM
Photo by WILL LEW

Katie Moore may be content to play second fiddle, but she truly shines at centre stage. Having been adrift in the local music scene for half of her life, the 34-year-old singer, songwriter and musician (born in Wetaskiwin, AB, raised in Hudson, QC) has allowed her career to be guided by “external forces,” yet every project she touches is lit by an internal flame, a talent that’s practically innate.

Her rich, angelic voice is an instrument she’s played as long as she can remember, mostly in collaboration with or in support of internationally renowned Canadian musicians. Conversely, penning her own material is a skill she’s had to hone, and has done so from a very young age.

“I remember writing songs when I was little,” she says, sitting across a Caffè Italia table. “I had a little spiral notebook and I re-wrote the lyrics to a Rod Stewart song. I remember being super emotional about it and showing it to my parents and they did not understand at all how amazing it was.”

At 12, she went on to transform Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” into “Famous Blue Toilet,” “this really stupid farce all about this toilet and my dad,” she recalls. “I don’t know what inspired that.”

In high school, Moore indulged her love of folk and country music, testing her skills with a couple of loosely assembled bands. When she moved to Montreal at 17, she played her first gigs with a band featuring her roommates, Pascal Oliver (her then-boyfriend, now a member of Valleys) and the Mirror’s own Raf Katigbak.

“We were teenagers who’d just left home and had a band and drank two-fours of Molson Ex,” she recalls. “It was rock ’n’ roll. We did some Pavement covers and we had songs that kinda sounded like Pavement or Swervedriver. I played electric guitar and sang back-up. I was not a good guitar player, so that wasn’t good for anyone.”

Being a slightly uneasy fit for Moore, the short-lived band—which went by a series of names, including the Incredible Redhead (not because of Moore’s orange locks but rather Oliver’s cherry-red dye job), RU487 and the Mighty Zentradi—was merely a stepping stone.

COUNTRY CALLIN’

It wasn’t until she started attending the Wheel Club’s old-time country Mondays and bluegrass Sundays at Barfly that she fell in with a truly like-minded lot. It was at these open-mic hoe­downs that she met Peter Hay, Randall Lawrence and Andrew Horton, with whom she formed her first ensemble, dubbed Katie Moore and the Country Gentlemen, and later Katie Moore and the Night Jars—they released a record in 2005, consisting mostly of covers.

She also met Angela Desveaux, a local country singer on the rise. In 2004, with Dara Weiss, they formed the bluegrass trio Yonder Hill, releasing a self-titled LP in 2008. (Their sophomore album will be recorded this year, following Desveaux’s maternity leave.)

Two other fateful meetings transpired in the mid-aughts: she met Warren C. Spicer and Matthew Woodley, members of the ambitious local rock band Plants and Animals. She and Spicer joined David Macleod to form a country-folk band called Timber!, who released an album, The New Gentleman’s Shuffle, in 2005. (They’re reuniting for a benefit show on Feb. 13.) She’s also played on both Plants and Animals albums, Parc Avenue and La La Land, and Spicer produced Moore’s second solo LP, Only Thing Worse, released by Borealis in 2007.

Critics were practically unanimous in their praise for the collection of tender, melancholy tunes, some of them light-hearted observational narratives, others heavy-set laments for people who’d passed. But it was her voice that attracted the most attention, drawing comparisons to Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton and Gillian Welch.

Moore’s other fateful encounter during this period was with Josh Dolgin. They were in a cultural studies class together at McGill, and initially met because a female friend of hers developed a crush on Dolgin—sadly for her, he swings the other way. But he did take to Moore, on a professional level, interviewing her for Hour and subsequently asking her to write lyrics and sing with him for his hip hop/klezmer project, Socalled. They collaborated on “You Are Never Alone,” a song about a Jewish cowboy.

“That changed everything.”

OTHER PEOPLE’S PROPERTY

With the release of Ghettoblaster in 2007, Socalled became something of an international sensation. Moore toured widely with Socalled, from New York to Krakow. Along the way, she met Toronto-born, Berlin-based pianist, songwriter and entertainer Chilly Gonzales and, with Dolgin, Mocky (another Canadian ex-pat) and singer Matthew Flowers, became part of his band for roughly a year.

“He’s sort of a shy, reluctant singer,” says Moore, explaining Gonzales’s need for back-up. “It was really fun to see that other world of… I mean, it’s not even considered high production. I guess Peter Gabriel is high production, but for me, it was like, what?! Costumes? Planned stage banter?”

More high production was in store for Moore when she scored a gig as part of a back-up choir for Feist (through Gonzales, who cowrote a number of songs with the Canadian chanteuse) at the Vancouver Olympics, no less. In Whistler, they played an outdoor show on a rotating stage; in Vancou­ver, they played the ornate Orpheum theatre.

“It was really fun, it was intense. We did a month of rehearsals for two shows, pretty much the opposite of the usual, ‘Why don’t we rehearse at soundcheck?’ kind of vibe,” Moore reports, chuckling at her approach to playing live, which is more natural than casual.

In another departure from her comfort zone, Moore collaborated with local dance/art troupe Little Bang on a joint live performance at la Sala Rossa, as part of last summer’s Suoni per il Popo­lo festival. She wrote the music—which was similar to her sad, sultry roots stylings, with added ambient infusions—as the troupe choreographed the piece. With Spicer, Woodley, Mishka Stein and Jessica Moss, Moore accompanied the dancers incognito—the band played behind a curtain.

“It was cool to not be the focus, to be in our own little orchestra pit. I really liked that.”

FAVOURS RETURNED

That’s hardly surprising coming from such a self-effacing character, armed with an arsenal of self-deprecating jokes. But even as Moore was working on these projects, along with Patrick Wat­son’s 2009 album, Wooden Arms, she was building her own opus, a solo record called Montebello. The title track makes reference to the 2007 Summit of the Americas that took place in the small titular Quebec town, bringing together Stephen Harper, Felipe Calderon, George W. Bush, a pack of protesters and an army of security, including some undercover SQ officers who have been accused of being “agents provocateurs.”

“I feel like that incident really got swept under the rug, and of course it happened recently in Toronto again,” says Moore, who wrote the song as an open letter to the officers. “I wish I had a more romantic reason [for the title],” she says.

There is romance on the record, and sadness, and even the occasional lament, including a cover of the McGarrigle Sisters’ “Heart Like a Wheel.” But Moore challenged herself to sidestep heartbreak, an effort abetted by the relatively upbeat pacing and full, folk-rock/chamber cabaret instrumentation. Even the saddest songs are tempered by beautiful arrangements of electric and acoustic guitars, drums, piano, organ, strings and flute; the record overflows with the talent of Gonzales, Woodley,  Horton, Dave Gossage,  Mike O’Brien, Heather Schnarr, Joe Grass, Emma Baxter, Eric Digras and Spicer, who once again doubles as producer.

Recorded in bursts, between the Treatment Room and Hotel2Tango, Montebello was partly funded via Kickstarter.com, a site that allows artists to appeal for donations from friends, family and the general public, with dignity.

“I like the idea that people get to choose different prizes; it doesn’t really feel like begging people for money, which makes me uncomfortable,” says Moore, who’s never had much luck with government grants. Said prizes included a house concert ($500), a YouTube dedication ($150), a digital download of the album ($10), a CD ($25) and a custom-made Katie Moore apron ($35). “I was so surprised, I met my goal [$3,000] in a week! I was touched that so many people were willing to do that. It made me feel really good. But now I have to make all these aprons!”

Before running off to get her aprons printed, Moore reveals that the name of her imprint, Purple Cat, through which she is releasing Montebello this week, is based on a cartoon character favoured by her manager’s son, but not, as I suggested, Catwoman. “Actually, yes, that is exactly it,” she proposes with a wink, “a pioneering female of the comic world, because she’s stealthy and she always lands on her feet. She’s always been a muse for me.” ■

ALBUM LAUNCH WITH CHARLOTTE CORNFIELD AT CABARET DU MILE END, THURSDAY, FEB. 3, 9 P.M., $10

Short URL: http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/?p=18402