kate redgate

It took me a good bit of time to figure out how to explain exactly why I feel so strongly about Kate Redgate and her recently released album Nothing Tragic. After about the fourth time through the disc it hit me what I liked - everything.


Redgate spent her youth in Illinois and has spent a significant amount of time in the Midwest. Currently she resides in New England. The music on Nothing Tragic is a most engaging mix of country and blues with any lines between the two significantly blurred by her wonderful and expressive vocals, which are equally at home in both camps at once.

She also plays acoustic guitar throughout and has written all 11 songs on the disc. For Roxy's she asks, "Where do you go/When you've got no home...How do you love/When you've never been loved?"

One thing that seems bold to me for an artist cultivating a country audience is her widespread inclusion of Tom West's Hammond organ on many of the cuts. Other songs carry a heavy dose of Kevin Barry's tasty licks on electric and steel guitar.

As a working mom with two children with a boatload of talent, I really hope many will give this disc a chance. There's some great songs to be found and some wonderful talent on display. You can find out more about her here. Let me know how you feel about her. - Rick Teverbaugh

Any number of hotels, bars, lounges, etc… around the city of Nashville features writers nights where singer/songwriters get the opportunity to showcase their material. As you can imagine, some of these nights are great while others are simply brutal. That is what makes the singer/songwriter genre such an outstanding one. The ability for an artist to come in and express themselves anyway they want to is a great asset to the genre and Kate Redgate has done just that with her new album Nothing Tragic. Her combination of great lyrics with great melodies that seem to know the exact moment to fuse in pop is attractive to anyone listening. Songs like the catchy “Into The Blues,” “Believe” and “Mississippi Moon,” have you captured for their ability to hammer home a well-crafted lyric while maintaining a radio friendly beat that keeps you tapping along. However, Redgate truly shines when she slows things down on cuts like “The Palace” or “Another Story.” With these songs it feels as though Redgate is inviting you into her life and wants to tell you about it and when it all comes down to it that’s what makes a songwriter great. Throughout Nothing Tragic Kate Redgate simply invites you into her life very openly and candidly and by the end of the album you feel like you have just spent an hour over coffee with an old friend.
- Jeff Kurtis

You can slot Kate Redgate alongside the many fine country singers of the late seventies and early eighties—Kathy Mattea, Holly Dunn, early Patty Loveless and very early Trisha Yearwood—not because she sounds like any of them but because she has pre-Modern Country roots in her music. As varied as Country is these days, Nashville today pushes the Rock and the Pop more than real Country fans might wish and slowly but surely those fans will return (and have returned) to the roots. They already have to a degree, giving Bluegrass and the relatively new Americana genres new life and life, respectively. Nashville doesn't care. You have to produce huge numbers to make them care. The music? Pardon me while I chuckle because truth be told, the prevailing mantra has little to do with music. Substitute "marketable commodity."

So pardon me when a single mother from the East Coast tied to music by an umbilical chord (God, I love wordplay) scrapes together enough to put her music on tape because she had to. Yes, I said had to because sometimes it comes down to just that. For support, she logically went to Cressbrook Stables and Indian Meadow Farm, of course, fitting for the music she writes and performs, and to her fans. This is the new music industry paradigm, in spite of what the mainstream media would have you believe. When gathering funds, go to the fans. It works.

It worked plenty well enough to place eleven solid tunes on disc. Not just solid, but extremely well recorded. Producer Tom Eaton, who works out of his studio in Newburyport MA, grabbed the very best musicians he could find for this project and it shows. Like a well-tuned engine, the Redgaters (hey, not a bad name for a backup band, eh?) slip into gear on the first track and don't let up. An odd lineup, this, for few bands utilize organ throughout—well, country bands, anyway—but it works so well you don't blink an eye. In fact, after a handful of listens, you, like myself, should embrace the sound. I mean, the organ is a wonderful instrument and when handled as well as Tom West (and Tom Eaton on one track), it can be a force. Plug in the others (Kevin Barry on both electric and lap steel, Zach Field on drums, Michael Miksis on bass, and the occasional utility accordion, guitar and percussion of the aforementioned Mr. Eaton) and you have something.

Redgate is no slouch herself, either. With accent slightly Southern (by way of New England, maybe?), she bites down hard on some tracks, softer on others, fitting her phrasing to the track. Like on Another Story which another might soften into a soft love ballad but which she infuses with a very slight bitterness (it's the bite). And the rocking Nothing Tragic, Kentucky Headhunters'-tinged slide guitar pushing to the crescendo of the chorus (where it melds with organ and steel guitar perfectly). And the upbeat and choogling Mississippi Moon, shuffling rhythm in two-stepping fashion.

The cool thing about this is not just the music, but Kate Redgate. She is a humble single mother in love with life and music who knew that she had to do this. It takes courage to get this far, but what it really takes is unfailing belief and a mountain of hard work. If I worked for Nashville, I would have to say that this is what makes America great. I don't, so let me alter it to my own specifications. This is what makes "music" great. Welcome to the new music industry.
- Frank Gutch

The title is apt. This "snapshot" as Redgate calls it, is short on candy and long on soul. Her voice resonates with a sinewy and vigorous power, and envelopes a lyric like a candy wrapper on a melted Milky Way Bar...

Redgate pens a gritty lyric that is fearless about telling her own story. Case in point is the autobiographical "Bitteroot Valley Goodbye", which neither gives nor asks for any compromises...her songs will always be deeply rewarding.

-Bruce Menin 2006 - The Current

If you can't literally hear the miles in Kate Redgate's voice, you can certainly hear them in the lyrics of her songs: The sense of rootlessness, restlessness, the distance filling the void between desire and despair, the emotional dust that has been kicked up hanging in the air, blanketing everything...

-JC Lockwood 2005

- Merrimac River Arts Plus