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MP3 Katie Grace Helow - On Time & The Ocean
10 MP3 Songs in this album (58:00) !
Related styles: Folk: Alternative Folk, Folk: Fingerstyle, Solo Female Artist
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Details:
Ever since she was a little girl, Katie Grace Helow has been drawn to music. As far back as she can remember she would sit beside her father on the piano bench, watching and listening intently to every note. It wasn’t long before she discovered how to play by ear, and though she eventually took formal lessons in order to read music, Katie quickly realized that she preferred figuring out familiar tunes by memory, or simply writing her own.
Years later, at age 12, Katie was given her first guitar. She had become intrigued by the idea of playing guitar when she decided to learn an instrument that she could easily carry around with her, an advantage the piano lacked. Her uncle, a guitar player himself, took Katie shopping at a local music store, where together they picked out a small, beginner-level acoustic. She couldn’t put it down.
It was during high school that Katie Grace first began venturing out in front of an audience to play her original tunes. She performed at coffee shops, open mic nights and school talent shows, singing passionately about her views on the world. The more she played, the more her guitar began to feel like an extension of herself, and it soon became obvious that writing and performing music was now an inseparable part of her being.
While in high school and also in college, Katie played with a few different bands, sometimes on guitar, sometimes behind the drum set. She enjoyed collaborating with other musicians on different styles of music, but her solo project remained a priority, as writing and singing her own lyrics had become one of the most meaningful and intense aspects of her music.
In 2005 Katie decided that she had more than enough songs to put on a CD, and it was time to record. Having just recorded with one of the bands she was playing drums with, she asked Kevin Taylor, who had recorded the band in his home studio, if he would be interested in helping her with her own project. He agreed, and soon Katie Grace was holding her very first album, Let’s Be Wind. The CD was a compilation of all of her favorite originals, some dating back to high school. Wanting to add a personalized touch, she created an origami-style case out of a brown lunch bag, and individually burned and packaged every copy of Let’s Be Wind that she sold.
About a year later, Katie came across a classical guitar at a yard sale that Kevin Taylor was holding before his move to California. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in a long time; the guitar was covered in dust, one of the strings was missing, and the remaining strings were dull. Kevin told her that she could play it for a couple days before deciding if she wanted it, and since the missing string made it difficult to play standard guitar chords, Katie decided to approach this guitar differently than she had ever approached a guitar. She dropped the strings to an open A minor tuning, and searched for new chord formations while plucking the strings with her fingers. The music that began to emerge was very different than the aggressive, percussive strumming style she had been using for years on her steel string; this music felt soft, watery and haunting. She bought the guitar, and even after cleaning and restringing it, kept it as it was when she first played it: strange tuning, missing string and all.
From this guitar came every track on her most recent album, On Time and The Ocean. Recorded by Matt Welch in a garage apartment in Fall of 2009, it is an inward journey exploring themes such as change, loss, and coping. The ocean, which has always been a source of inspiration in Katie’s life as she’s grown up on the southeast coast, is also a consistent theme in the album, and this provides much of the imagery, both in the lyrics as well as the album art.
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