Kathy Moser

By Sandy Rogovin

In her song “Someone Like You,” singer-songwriter Kathy Moser asks this question: “What if it turned out to be true, that only one who could save this world was you?” Moser answers in the way she lives her life. And she’d like to inspire all of us to save the world, right along with her. A lifelong musician from northwestern New Jersey, Moser says that, for her, always, “Music is the engine.” From childhood, her music has taken her on a fascinating, far-reaching journey. Moser still remembers the fun-and the lyrics-of the camp songs she sang as a Girl Scout. For thirty-four years, the guitar has been her instrument of choice. But performing wasn’t always the full-time gig it is today. Making it so has required a healthy measure of curiosity, inventiveness and persistence.
Turning Points
After years of playing music for herself part-time, Moser started performing publicly in 1993, when she also released her first acoustic folk collection in a recording called Ride Horses. That same year, she helped found Biking Is Kind to the Environment, or BIKE, a local nonprofit corporation. Moser is still happy to have played a part in improving bicycle accessibility in Morris County and in changing the country’s master plan to be more bicycle-friendly. Eventually, though, the demands of that work had to give way to her music, and in 1995 she left to devote herself full-time to a career that made her even happier. She began teaching guitar. “I told myself I’d quit my job if I got 20 students,” she recalls. But she didn’t wait that long: “I got 16 and quit.” Moser says that, in her experience, “Every time I’d leap, the net would be there.” And so it was with her burgeoning music career, which flourished as she dedicated more and more energy to it. Visitors to her website will find a current schedule of performances crisscrossing the United States, as well as an agenda of local work with young people at school assemblies and in songwriting workshops. Her second recording, Good Things, released in 1999, showcases a variety of Moser’s live performances. Her most recent CD, Get Used to It! explores both personal and global topics in a range of musical styles. Another CD is due out this January.
More than Music
Kathy Moser’s broad array of passions is revealed in the long list of groups for whom she’s played benefit concerts, including World Women’s Conference on the Environment, New Jersey Sierra Club Centennial, New Jersey Peace Action, Transportation Alternatives, Glove House Youth Detention Center, and Babyland Family Violence Protection Program. Moser doesn’t hold back when she can use her talents to aid a cause she supports. She would rather dedicate her energy to save the planet than rail against what’s wrong with the world. In 2003, her tour included many antiwar events. She could feel the anger if the audiences, the energy of people against something While she thought that the message needed to be uttered, all that negative energy began to weigh on her. About the same time, Moser also had begun exploring the idea of buying a home. Her love of nature drew her toward natural building and a house that would have less of an impact on the natural world around it. For in nature she has always found “a source of solace, a place that makes sense when the modern world doesn’t.” That source is the golden thread weaving through much of her creative work-from song lyrics to essays on humankind’s balance with nature to photographs that unveil the intricate, unexpected beauty of flowers and trees. In 2003, Moser’s housing explorations took her to the Building With Spirit colloquium at Thunder Mountain Mediation Center in Bath, New York (Peaceweavers.com). She found people working from a place of joy rather than protest, ready to change the world by the transformative act of building their own dwellings and making their lives more simple and sustainable. Moser realized that the idea that a person doesn’t have the right to build his or her own shelter is a recent one in human history. She also came to see that sustainable living could “connect us to the planet and… bring people together.” This musician’s curiosity about natural building grew, taking her throughout the United States to visit structures made of straw bale, cordwood and reclaimed materials as well as earth-sheltered homes. She even helped build a straw bale house in New York State. Notes, photos and links to some of the communities she visited are on her website, KathyMoser.com. Moser returns to the Building With colloquium each year, renewing her knowledge and reconnecting with people from many backgrounds, all with a hopeful last message. At last year’s colloquium, two of Kathy Moser’s passions collided. Through her work with young people, she’d meet plenty of kids with energy and originality who needed somewhere to direct their enthusiasm. At the colloquium, she encountered teenagers who, though brought to Bath by their parents for logistical - Natural Awakenings