Singer- songwriter Kat Eaton told David Hennessy about her connection to Ireland, her new music and touring with Gregory Porter.
Welsh born, Yorkshire based soul/jazz artist Kat Eaton is returning to Ireland.
Kat’s connection to Ireland is both personal and professional.
She and her husband Nick first visited the country on their very first holiday together as a couple, falling in love with its culture, music, and people.
Since then, they have returned regularly and got to play their first Irish shows in Dublin and Cork last year. Now she is about to return for shows at Arthur’s Jazz and Blues Club and Coughlan’s for Cork Jazz Festival.
Kat recently released the single Break Free, the first from her forthcoming third album What Happens Now which is due next year.
Kat released her acclaimed debut Talk to Me in 2021. This was followed by Honestly which arrived last year.
Kat has established herself as one of the hardest working and talented performers in her field.
She has toured the UK/EU supporting the likes of Gregory Porter, Jools Holland, Paul Carrack, The Teskey Brothers, Marc Broussard and Mamas Gun, and has sold out venues like Ronnie Scotts in London as well as venues in Munich, Paris and Warsaw.
Jools Holland is among her admirers.
Her live performance videos on YouTube have received over 500k views in the first 6 months increasing Kat’s fan base immeasurably and Kat now has over 10M streams on Spotify.
Kat spoke to us ahead of her forthcoming Irish dates and about her new music.
You are releasing new music, how does it feel to have the album release to look forward to?
“It feels really good.
“The last album Honestly came out in ‘24 and we wanted to make sure that we got straight on with the next one.
“Talk to Me, my debut album, was ready before COVID but then we thought we better wait until COVID sort of subsided and we could actually kind of tour and stuff.
“It feels really good to be able to be consistently releasing and yes, I’m really excited about this new album and I think people are going to like it.
“The first single Break Free is a really nice starter track.
“We wanted to pique people’s intrigue with this first single so I hope we’ve done that with Break Free.”
What inspired the track, Break Free?
“Nick wrote the song.
“Nick’s my writing partner, producer, guitarist and he’s also my husband.
“We’re songwriting partners. The whole project has my name on it but it’s really our little baby.
“The song is about trying to not resist, trying to go with the current, just to let the current take you instead of putting up resistance.
“You know that feeling when you’re actually just creating resistance by kind of desperately wanting something and if you just let nature be, it ends up happening.
“If you’re putting out the right energy, you’ll be able to actually welcome in good stuff.”
Is it about getting out of your own way or not overthinking so much?
“Yeah, that’s exactly it.
“And that’s something that you can very easily do being in a creative industry.
“When you’re self-employed and you’re judged on your latest work, there is the want to desperately impress because if you don’t impress, then people aren’t going to buy your music, then people aren’t going to come and watch you on tour.
“It’s hard to be able to surrender to that and I think people would relate to that.”
You have spoken about your Irish connection, do you have Irish blood?
“There isn’t, annoyingly.
“It just feels like there should be.
“Nick’s got Irish blood so his family have been from there and whatnot.
“I’ve got Welsh blood, Scottish blood but no Irish blood which is very frustrating.
“Me and Nick have been together since we were 16 and we had our first little holiday together over in Dublin, staying in Barnacles hostel in Temple Bar.
“We have a lot of affection for Ireland because we came there and we just saw this outpouring of emotion.
“It’s just really nice to be able to see so much trad music and just be so inspired by it.
“There’s probably not much trad in my music but just the fact that the musicianship and the passion that people have for that music but also other genres of music, I think it’s really wonderful.
“We went to Galway a couple of years ago as well for a little holiday and there was a guy who was from Denmark who was playing the most amazing trad Irish music. His wife was Japanese and they were just absolutely engrossed in that scene and that genre. It was amazing to see that that Irish trad music was transcending language barriers and everything.
“We absolutely love it.
“Nick can’t get enough of Ireland.
“Quite often we say, ‘Should we go away again?’
“And I’m thinking, ‘Let’s go somewhere sunny’.
“Ireland can be sunny but he will always just be like, ‘Oh, let’s go back to Ireland. Can we go to Ireland?’
“And Northern Ireland as well.
“We’ve got a lovely friend Connor McDonald there who is a guitarist and we go and visit him quite often in Belfast.
“There’s so much love for Ireland and the people, the music and the scene.”
You finally got to play there last year..
“That’s right and it was wonderful.
“We did our first show last June ‘24 in Dublin first and that was fantastic.
“It was sold out at Arthur’s Jazz and Blues Club and had such a warm reception there.
“And we also had loads of fans that had come over from different parts of the world.
“We had people that had come from America.
“We had people that have come from Poland and someone from Iceland as well.
“I think it’s just an easier place to get to now that we’re out of the EU.
“I think it was just wonderful to be able to play for everybody there and to sell it out as well.
“It was wild for to do that for the first show we’ve ever done there.
“When we first went to stay in Barnacles in Dublin, me and Nick did a tiny bit of busking but I remember feeling really awkward because I’d never done any busking before.
“You guys are used to it and you’re comfortable with it but us English, we’re just awkward and I remember doing a couple of songs and then being like, ‘Oh, do you know what? I think I might just take these few pounds and go and get a beer and maybe we’ll go back and do it again later’.
“I was just really shy, painfully shy and I’ve completely changed since then and I’m not shy at all.
“But we were 18 and everybody else was just so professional and so confident.”
So that was your first bit of playing in Ireland then..
“Yeah, that’s right.
“I think we did about half an hour and then we called it a day.”
These upcoming shows you have in Dublin and Cork will be a chance to play stuff from the new album, does that mean Irish fans will be among the first to hear it?
“Exactly, yeah.
“We’re doing two tracks off the new album and we’re playing with these lovely Irish musicians that are mainly from Cork.
“Me and Nick have got a lovely band there.
“We’re going to be playing these new tunes and learning them in the sound check together so it should be really fun.
“I can’t wait for that.”
Earlier this year you toured with Gregory Porter, what was that like?
“It was really good.
“He’s a wonderful man.
“He’s a really, really sweet dude.
“Very generous with his time, very generous with his advice.
“He was wonderful to watch as well.
“He’s so passionate and he really feels every single note in every single word when he’s performing.
“The band don’t know what song he’s going to go into next.
“We got to know them all and it was really, really lovely to be able to do that.
“But they were telling us that Gregory just sort of changes up the set every so often and sometimes he’ll play songs from 10 years ago that none of them can remember and they’re sort of feeling their way through but them being pro musicians, they get there by the end of the song.
“It’s just really lovely and fluid to watch that happening before your eyes live on stage.
“He did a talk as well and the talk was really beautiful.
“He just talked very openly about the prejudices that he’s faced and about music being a way for him to therapise himself and also be able to connect which is something that is so important to me, to connect with and to relate to people.
“It’s a marvellous thing when you get a message or you can have somebody that comes up to you that says that your music has made their day better or changed their perspective on something or really helped them get through a hard time.
“It’s something that Gregory endorses.
“He wants to help people.
“The message is always love.
“And that’s something that I’d like to sort of take on as well.
“As well as being really loving and really kind and everything, he’s also very funny.
“We had a lot of laughs and got very drunk quite often which was good.”
You mentioned people having poignant reactions to the music, have you had fans reveal just how much songs have meant?
“Yeah, I have.
“There was this lovely lad in in Holland who came up and said that Barricade, which was the first song off my first album, really helped him get through something.
“That was really wonderful and then subsequent songs have really had an effect on him.
“And Need a New Way to Say I Love You as well has been really effective and people have got in touch about that one.
“And Bad Advice.
“That song was born out of my frustrations with people being so ignorant and prejudice about the LGBTQ+ community.
“I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘Thank you for that’.
“It’s amazing to talk to people about their experiences and the way that people relate to songs might not be the way that you ever intended them to relate to those songs.
“There’s a song called Time We Said Goodbye that was on the last album that is actually about us leaving London but it’s written as a love song so people found that really inspiring and relatable and they’re sometimes talking about times when they’ve had to say goodbye to somebody that they’ve loved.
“I’ve had people that have covered my songs and sent me their versions of them and it’s been really sweet and people that are all over the world have done fantastic versions of the songs.
“You’re just like, ‘I don’t even know how you’ve got hold of this’.
“It is amazing and it is better than any review if you can connect with somebody especially when they’re not English speaking and they still understand and they still connect.
“It’s a beautiful thing.”
What songs get the biggest reactions live?
“I play Talk to Me on the piano, just me on my own, in the second set often and I get a lot of compliments about that.
“I can sometimes hear people sniffing in the audience because that one’s about a friend of mine who was really struggling with their mental health and stopped talking to us and then started speaking again.
“But we wrote a song about it just because we weren’t able to get through.
“She wasn’t answering her phone, she wasn’t doing anything and she’s doing alright now not because of the song but just circumstances.
“But you can hear people in the background when I’m playing that song live sniffing and crying.
“It’s a wonderful thing.
“It’s hard to keep on top of your emotions when you see other people emoting, isn’t it?
“I don’t know about you but if I see people crying, I’m a mess. I start crying.
“It’s a blessing that my eyesight is not that good.”
Who are your big inspiration? Who made you want to sing? “Well when I was a kid, I was listening to a lot of jazz artists.
“I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Julie London, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Roberta Flack, all those kind of people.
“And then some soul artists like Aretha, Stevie, Marvin Gaye and Luther Van dross but someone that I got completely obsessed with was Janis Joplin.
“I just loved her raw energy and her passion.
“And Joe Cocker, those two very much let music flow through them and you could see it just running through their veins and every note you could see that it was a strain.
“When you see a guitar player wincing and all that stuff, there is that pure satisfaction when you see them let go and release and let go and release and then tense up.
“It’s a wonderful thing.
“I remember when I was about 12, 13 I had this New Woman CD which had loads of divas on: Whitney Houston, Sheryl Crowe, Shania Twain, Sinead O’Connor and I learned how to sing all of those songs with their inflections and try to emulate their tones.
“I was all over the place in terms of what my sound was because I was just sort of trying to copy everything and I guess that’s where I’ve ended up now: An amalgamation of all of those vocalists.”
Was it always music for you? Did you ever think of doing anything else?
“Yeah, I went to university and I studied fine art so I had no clue.
“When we were growing up, being a musician wasn’t something that was obvious.
“I didn’t know anything about the music schools, nothing.
“My teachers at school didn’t tell us about London College of Music.
“I didn’t hear anything about LIPA.
“I didn’t know a thing so I was like, ‘Well, I obviously can’t study music’.
“I just assumed that it was never going to be a career because it was not going to be financially durable, but I was very wrong.”
So what changed that you could see a future in music?
“I was at university and Nick was at university, and we were coming back every weekend to Sheffield to play and we had a guy that was very big inspiration for both of us.
“He was a Sheffield blues legend singer and guitarist called Frank White.
“He gave us a really good bit of advice back when we were 18, 19 and he was just saying, ‘You need to start writing. You need to get on with writing because that’s your bread and butter, that is your currency’.
“Once we started writing, we knew it was going to be a slow burn.
“We kind of educated ourselves around that, around writing music and then we started writing for other people and then we started writing for ourselves.
“It was a very slow project but we started accumulating a lot of songs.
“It became apparent that if we were to write, we would be able to actually live properly not just hand to mouth.
“And that was from Frank saying that when we when we were 19, ‘You need to write music’.”
Break Free is out now.
What Happens Now is out 29 May.
Kat Eaton plays Arthur’s Jazz & Blues Club, Dublin on 24 October and Coughlan’s (3pm and 7pm), Cork Jazz Festival, Cork on 25 October.
For more information, click here.
