Press Reviews
Kathleen Haskard "Don't Tell" (Howlin' Hound 2008)
Americana UK May 27th 2008 - Reviewer : Del Day
It’s a small, small world for sure.Having first encountered Kathleen Haskard many, many moons ago at a fantastic open mic night that used to run under a Turkish restaurant in Battersea, years later and I am given the task to review her second album. Weird. There, surrounded by some other great performers – The Big Shave, anyone? – Haskard, pretty much everytime, would come up with a song that would resonate around my head until the following week. Thankfully, given those memories, Don't Tell doesn't dissapoint. Produced knowingly and lovingly by Chuck Prophet, who unleashes that telecaster to great effect throughout you will be pleased to hear, Don’t Tell is essentially a battle between heart and mind, a personal voyage down the thoroughfares of love whilst trying to avoid life’s one way streets and emotional cul-de-sacs. A voice that is warm and rounded Haskard is not one to holding back when delivering lines full of grit and purpose. Stand-out tracks include the opening “Second Star,” a slow-burning gem on which Prophet simmers with intent, “Losers Weep,” a co-write with Stacey Earle hides an illicit secret in its poignant old-time delivery and “Hallelujah,” a simplistic ballsy rocker that wouldn’t have seemed out of place on an early Patti Smith record. There is honesty about Haskard that is endearing. Like her this is a record that comes across bold and brash at times but scrape away a little and you unearth a fragile heart of gold.
link : http://www.americana-uk.com/auk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Reviews&file=index&req=showcontent&id=3764
MAVERICK album review October 2007
JHS
Kathleen HaskardDon’t Tell
Howlin’ Hound Records
****1/2
Talented singer-songwriter produces superb release, covering many different styles influenced by growing up and living alongside the sun-drenched beaches of California
Any project that Simon Alpin and Chuck Prophet are involved with has always got a good head start and this second release from Kathleen Haskard really is superb. Vocally, think Dido but with a harder edge. Dark and mysterious, Kathleen describes her music as folk-rock noir. I just love it when the first track on any album grabs your attention and with Second Star Kathleen hits the nail right on the head; a blues-based song on the theme of relationships that benefits from the guitar work of Chuck Prophet—he really does squeeze noises out of his guitar that are totally unique. The perfect backdrop to Kathleen’s breathy vocals, his playing lifts the song to a different level. Play Me the second track on the other hand is pure pop, but with an edge, still retaining a commercial feel this song could easily be on Radio 2 daytime play lists. Kathleen does rock out though, and the title track Don’t Tell is a real rocker, almost goth, reminiscent of Siouxsie and the Banshees both lyrically and in the song delivery. Unfortunately, the pre-release copy I received gives no clue as to the identity of the various musicians that appear on the album apart from the aforementioned Simon and Chuck, who coincidentally also produced the album. Apart from the normal line up of guitar, bass and percussion there is also some superb Hammond B3 organ and harmonica featured, especially on the wondrous track Will Someone Explain, a bluesy gospel style of song that is perfection.
Kathleen is a fourth generation Californian and splits her time between living in London and the Santa Monica mountains—at times the album has quite a British feel shown perfectly on Loser’s Weep, a co-write with Stacey Earle—a soft gentle folk song showcasing Kathleen’s perfectly clear vocal delivery, best described as British folk but with an American twist. This really is an album of many different musical styles encompassing rock, folk, country and blues, but all having an alternative edge. If you fancy trying something a little different from the norm this comes highly recommend. JHS
THE BRINK interview / Paul Hawkins
Paul Hawkins / THE BRINK
SSHH Don't Tell........Singer, songwriter, political activist and all round task manager Kathleen Haskard has her new album Don`t tell out on July 23rd, on her own Howlin` Hound label. A sussed and culturally aware musician who passionately believes in the healing capacity of music, people power and that the personal is most definetly political. We got together to chew over music, life and the family tree;
PH - You have lived a varied and interesting life Kathleen, looking at your bio on your website, what came first for you, music or politics?
KH - Definitely music. My dad was a singin’ in the shower kind of guy. He has a beautiful voice and was into Tommy Wolfe and Fran Landesmans SPRING CAN REALLY HANG YOU UP THE MOST type jazz. I was in school and church choirs from a very young age. An alto age 10!
PH - Tell me something about your political awareness, how did your bullshit detector antenna know where to home in?
KH - If activism can be genetic then it may have always been there laying dormant until it was lit up at 14 by my high school history teacher, Paula Ogren. Her mantra was “apathy is a sin”! and if you have the right to vote in what purports to be a democratic society then it is practically criminal to not exercise that right. And if you are a woman even more negligent and a minority woman…… well, you get the gist.
PH - Who would you namecheck as inspirations to your music?
KH - My dad, The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, John Prine, Bob, the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Bros, CSN&Y, JD Souther, Jackson Browne, Marianne Faithful, Joni Mitchell, Dolly, Bobbie Gentry, Steve Earle, Robert Burns and the mighty Chuck Prophet.
PH - And more generally on your life?
KH - My mom, Sister Mary Karlyn, Paula Ogren, Tom Hayden, Tom Paine, Sarah Raphael, my ridiculously beautiful, talented sons, Skylar, Aubrey and Luke are a constant source of inspiration and exasperation. My mad scientist/physician husband Dorian. His work ethic and dedication to his vocation is astounding.
PH - You have quite a lineage, ancestors who led challenging political lives, tell me about them?
KH - My maternal grandfather Robert O’Dowd was an Irish 1st generation American who was a card carrying member of the Communist Party back in the day when it was a romantic movement. When the farm in Michigan went bust he went into town to join the rank and file in the booming auto industry. He became embroiled in the embryonic Labour Movement and fought for the rights of workers to be members of a union. Though inspirational it was to be his undoing. He helped organise and lead various strikes and routinely got his head stoved in by GM/government goon squads. He died of a brain hemorrhage years later. He wasn’t yet 40.
My maternal great grandmother Elizabeth Broom was a colourful Englishwoman from Devon who owned and ran a speakeasy during the Prohibition which included girls upstairs as an optional extra. And my great great uncle on my dads side of the family Jesus Garcia is a folk hero in Mexico who was a train engineer who when a dynamite laden train caught fire in the middle of the town of Nacozari, Sonora, he drove the train out towards the mines away from the heavily populated town center and blew up with the train! A folk song Maquina 501 tells the story in a bit more detail. That was November 1907 so this year is the centenary party which I’m hoping to get to.
PH - I always find it confounding when I hear people say "I leave the politics to the politicians"........that in itself is an act of disengagement, surely?
KH - Yep. That old apathy chestnut again. There’s no point whinging about stuff that you can ostensibly affect change about if you don’t make your feelings known to the people in power who are supposed to be there to represent and implement our ideas and opinions. Bitching and complaining can be great fun but pretty ineffectual unless it spawns great literature or art or is backed up with calls and letters and voting with your feet on polling day. Unless of course you are a member of the Anarchist Party whose motto is “Don’t Vote"! Because whoever you vote for The Government always gets in” !!!
PH - Naomi Klein has written a book called No Logo, in an attempt to de-mystify and critique globalisation and capitalism. She makes clear the complete lack of unbranded public space, ie gigs, art exhibitions, murals - multinationals have crept into patronising all these events and use them as a tool to enhance a brand culture for themselves. Whats your view on this?
KH - I instinctively disapprove of obvious branding and am much more likely to be positively predisposed to companies that keep their sponsorship on the down low. but therein lies the rub; no brand - no visibility and no easily attributable credit. Whatever happened to the buzz that came as a result of anonymous altruism?
PH - It got sponsored by Nike. When will Tony Blair be in the dock for war crimes, I wonder?
KH - My guess is never. Just as it’s only a matter of history that booze is legal and marijuana isn’t, with Blair it’s a question of whose in power, when, and whose empire of dirt is the most omnipotent. I don’t think history will be kind to him but he seems to be getting away with it at the moment!
PH - I think the Iraq attrocities will follow him arund like a bad smell for the rest of his pampered, cushioned life. I recently interviewed writer Chris Salewicz who has published a bio on Joe Strummer, were you a fan of Strummer and The Clash?
KH - In spirit I most definately am. The attitude, the energy and the sheer balls that came across through the music was radical and exciting. Sonically/melodically I was challenged to a duel by them and the music left me feeling agitated and unresolved, which maybe was the point in the first place. I already had a young baby and so couldn’t/didn’t throw myself into that anarchic whirlwind lifestyle.
PH - How was it singing on Neil Youngs album, Living With War? How did it come about?
KH - It was thrilling! It was combining my favourite things, singing and shouting about what’s gone wrong with our “Jesus take the wheel” form of government and how it’s been hijacked and being pillaged by this right wing cabal even as we speak!
I had flown into LA after having spent 2 very productive days recording the new album with Chuck Prophet in San Francisco, still high from the art we had begun to make. I was awakened around 8:30 am by a phone call from my great friend Dan Navarro (Lowen & Navarro) asking if I would be up for a 12 hour backing vocal session in the Capitol Records building. At first I was kind of blasé about it cause I was half asleep and sort of on vacation. But when he said “Kath it’s for Neil Young” I let out a yelp and dropped the phone. I had to be ok’d by the great Rosemary Butler who along with Neil conducted the choir. She had heard me sing and at a festival in Durango we had both played at the previous summer and so I was in!
PH - What happened then?
KH - Dan came and got me and off we went. We sang for 12 hours with 2 half hour breaks for food. As soon as we arrived we were split into bass, alto and sopranos. The lyrics were rolled up on a giant overhead projector screen and as we read them people would audibly gasp or burst into spontaneous applause. I couldn’t believe that finally someone with his sort of high profile and access to the big media machine was coming out of the closet and singing/saying/shouting even, about the injustices of this war and the hypocrisies that we tend to tolerate in our society on a daily basis. We came out of the session 12+ hours later exhausted, elated and floating in a surrealistic “we can change the world” bubble. My throat chakra was buzzing and glowing. Yeah that’s right the healing power of music….
PH - You have many songwriting credits, via Bug Music, do you write songs with people like Stacey Earle in mind, or do they hear your version and arrangement first?
KH - Yeah I have a couple of songs on other people’s albums but they have all been direct collaborations. Stacey and I met through her publisher at the time Jewel Coburn (Ten Ten Music) who wanted us to get together and write so as to combine our writing sensibilities. Stacey has this folk/hillbilly country/mexican mariachi thang she does and I’m a kinda genre blended west coast, alt blues rock, folk rock noire, jaded by living in London kind of writer. So we wrote “Losers Weep” for her first album SIMPLE GEARLE and her big brother Steve sang harmonies on it. It’s a song that we both drew out of our shared experiences of being single teenage mothers. Stacey’s dad Jack Earle helped us finish it off. Another is “I Got My Own Way Of Doin’ Things” on Lowen & Navarro’s SCRATCH AT THE DOOR. It started life as a slack blues idea I had knockin’ around. We were all in the room and hammered it out together. I have yet to have an artist record a song that I have written without them in the room with me. But the night is young…..
PH - Don’t Tell will be released at the end of July, tell me about the songs on it?
KH - Half the songs are co-writes and the other half are just me. Track 8 Hallelujah was written by Chuck and me on the spot in the studio while recording the album. He had invited his friend JT Leroy down to write with us that day and I was really unsettled by it. Writing songs is a very intimate process for me and so when he announced that this crazy 15 year old boy/40 something woman/number 1 selling author was comin’ in to try her hand at songwriting, I freaked. She never turned up so Chuck and Paul Revelli started laying down this drums and 6 string bass, White Stripes-esque rock riff and the lyrics just started spilling onto the page. I couldn’t write them fast enough. There are some irreverent catholic metaphors and water and death by drowning…. some of my recurring themes.
PH - You`re still in therapy then? And did you have the drowning theme in mind when writing Like A Pearl Necklace by any chance?
KH - No. More like gargling…. On Like A Pearl Necklace, track 6, started by me pilfering a couple of lines from my friend Phil Colley’s poem that set me off on the adventure of writing the rest of it with a friend and collaborator here in London, Toby Slater. The pearl necklace in question is an actual pearl necklace not a metaphor for the shimmering residue that results in various leisure pursuits! It’s a ‘justify your war/behaviour within relationships song’ that Chuck made dark and eerie by playing a weird little 3 octave organ and his shadowy guitar licks.
PH - Okay. Glad we got that cleared up.....
KH - With Leave To Remain, track 10, I wrote on my own after mucking around with various picking and plucking single notes and chord progressions quite a way up on the fret board from where I usually play. I play guitar by ear so happy accidents are a big part of my writing technique. Lyrically it started off as an exploration of my so called “permanent residency” status in the UK. The actual stamp in my passport reads INDEFINATE LEAVE TO REMAIN. A pretty vague ethereal way of saying ‘you can stay for now, anyway’. It sort of morphed into a song about trying to get something across to someone. About communicating your essence….or not. About how you can more fully understand and appreciate someone or something in their absence. Simon plays lap steel on this one and when we were mixing it I said I wanted him to pull up the volume of the lap steel track. But he said the “drifting in from the next room” vibe was perfect for the song. And so it is….
PH - Produced by Simon Alpin and Chuck Prophet, how was Don’t Tell recorded ? Was it done in one hit?
KH - No. Because we are all so busy with our various satellite projects it was a real challenge to find chinks in our respective schedules to get down to doing some recording. Simon and I did some basic guitar and vocal guides in my front room in Camberwell (southeast London) and some drum tracks at studio near Bristol that Portishead has used.
PH - Did you do any recording outside of the UK?
KH - Then I went out to Chuck in San Francisco where he pulled in his muso posse at Hyde Street Studios and we recorded 5 of the songs live, as a band with very little post production tinkering.
Working with multiple producers can be tricky but we avoided most overlapping and so there are songs that are entirely Simon produced and songs that are Chuck treatments.
PH - And who else played on the album?
KH - Both Chuck and Simon play guitars and bass throughout. The drummers are both called Paul! Revelli and Wigens to be exact. The one and only Danny Eisenberg on Hammond and piano, Tom Heyman on Pedal Steel, JJ Wiesler on guitar, Julian Wilson from the UK’s Grand Drive lent his organ and vocals and my great friend and collaborator Sandy Stewart did BV’s on our song Play Me.
PH - You manage yourself, run your own label and, as you mentioned, are your own masseur when on the road, does the control of your music, your art, outweigh the hard grind this must be?
KH - I know no other way. I would love to have the support that a great label can offer but it hasn’t come my way yet. Whether I would be able to let go some of the artistic control for the sake of having the help with the machinations of getting the music to a wider audience is unknown. Like any sort of working relationship it’s all about your ability to compromise.
PH - Whats your plan for the coming year?
KH - Gigs gigs and more gigs. I have put together a great band here in the UK and I am in the process of setting up a UK tour in February and a US tour in the Spring. Because of the cost of touring with a band the plan is to have a local pickup band in every region. It is another way of keeping it fresh too. Different players bring something new to the table and keep the stale bread at bay.
PH - And finally, the devil, is she/he all bad? Or just an over used and redundant religious metaphor, rich with harmful guilt association used by the church to instill fear, loathing and control in its followers?
KH - Flip Wilson’s immortal line “The devil made me do it” was used as a way to distance his character Geraldine from taking responsibility for his/her actions. I was raised in the Catholic church and from the age of 10 – 17 went to Catholic schools.
PH - I was branded by Ranch Catholico from an early age too, managed to get a skin graft once I hit mid teens.....
KH - I never really believed in the devil. From around the age of 10 I found myself at odds with the nuns when I questioned how pre marital sex and murder could be in the same category of sin. All organised religions have their own particular methods of control. The one thing most of them have in common is this sense of a Heaven and a Hell. They justify their existence by acting as the go-between for us mere mortals, with God/Heaven and the Devil/Hell. I prefer to take responsibility (or not) for my own actions and forge my own relationships with whoever does or doesn’t exist. I find the only reason the devil is of any use is for red costumes on Halloween / a way to change up the way to serve hard boiled eggs!
Many thanks to Kathleen Haskard. Her new album, Dont Tell is out on 23rd July, available from all good purveyors of sound art.
You can cosy on up as a friend to Kathleen on the Myspace swingers ball too...........
Paul Hawkins
Look out for the guilty preacher.............
Don't Tell! David Kidman for netrhythms.com
Net Rhythms / David Kidman
Singer-songwriter Kathleen's a 4th generation native Californian who divides her time between south-east London and Santa Monica; a friend of Stacey Earle (whom she's supported onstage), Kathleen's latest claim to fame was as a singer in the choir on Neil Young's Living With War. But Kathleen's got so much individual to offer in her own right if Don't Tell is anything to go by. Though she describes her music as folk-rock-noir, I still really didn't know what to expect here, and even then I was more than pleasantly surprised by this intriguing mix of styles that's all bound together by Kathleen's gorgeous, full-breathed, deep-toned voice.Her calling-card is sure laid out in an attention-grabbing way by the opening cut, Second Star, a beautifully mysterious guitar-drenched slice of pure moody Americana that, as much as it puts Kathleen herself in the spotlight, also showcases the instrumental and arranging skills of the album's co-producer Chuck Prophet (there's that man again!!!). Thereafter, there's an edgy alt-type restlessness, a sense of subliminal tension almost, that underlies both Kathleen's writing and the moving-between-musical-genres gambit of the rest of the disc.
There's a soft-pedalled country-waltz (Will Someone Explain), an enchantingly fragile electro-ballad (Until It's Time To Go), a delicate, minimally-scored acoustic drama (the enigmatic closer Leave To Remain) and the confidential streetwise-shuffle of Traffic Starts To Hum, also an appealing co-composition with Stacey and Jack Earle (Losers Weep), while on the other tack completely there's pounding goth-rock (Don't Tell), and full-on rock (Hallelujah, complete with premature fade), and the sinisterly brooding, deeply anti-war Like A Pearl Necklace on which Kathleen espouses her unwavering political-activist convictions. Other musicians helping out here along with Chuck P include Simon Alpin (guitar), Danny Eisenberg and Julian Wilson (Hammond organ), and Tom Heyman (pedal steel): splendid musos each and every one, who leave an admirable degree of space between the notes while giving plenty of variety in texture and mood to keep interest going throughout this ten-song set.
It's a very impressive album indeed, and only now do I discover that somehow I missed out on Kathleen's debut CD, Into The Deep, an omission which I fully intend to rectify. As for the title - well, just you go on ahead and ignore it: instead, you tell everyone about Kathleen's music!
16.07.07 12 Bar Kathleen Haskard and the Guilty Preachers
Gaz Hayes
16.07.07 Kathleen Haskard and the Guilty Preachers,Sam Sallon, Dave Sutherland
12Bar Club
A free evening and a quick internet search finds this interesting outing well worth the investment. Familiar and friendly from the off with an on-the-edge where-this-will-go approach Kathleen has a pedigree spirit. With songs from the superb Simon Alpin and Chuck Prophet produced CD ‘don’t tell’ (out next week but on sale tonight and my album of the year so far by a mile) this gig was one of those perfect showcases. Stand out songs Traffic Starts to Hum, Losers Weep, Pearl Necklace made the band of four guitarists and one drummer, er, stand out. Terrific. Sensual and moody, versatile and passionate, disconnected and dangerous. Kathleen loved singing Hallelujah so much she insisted on doing an immediate reprise. I’d have taken a third outing as it was a perfect cacophony of sound, spirit and swirling commotion. Four guitarists and one drummer makes for a close dynamic on the 12 Bar stage. And from that punky attack she was able to turn the session on it’s head with an incredibly intimate finale and the mesmerising Leave To Remain. Kathleen is hoping to line up as support to Chuck Prophet when he plays The Luminaire in early October. Don’t Tell? Tell!
Gaz Hayes
The Big Gigs / Minneapolis Star Tribune
Jon Bream
A California singer-songwriter who now calls London home. Haskard has a resume that confirms her craft and her politics. She's written tunes with Lowen & Navarro and Stacey Earle and sung in the choir on Neil Young's "Living With War". The deliciously deep-voiced troubadour is about to release "Don't Tell", a moody collection of Americana produced by Chuck Prophet and Simon Alpin. At her best, she recalls KD Lang. She will be accompanied by Brian Barns of Cafe Accordian Orchestra and Camille Gage.Into The Deep / debut album from singer-songwriter Kathleen Haskard
Net Rhythms - Mike Davies
This debut album from the singer-songwriting former California surf chick and chum of Stacey Earle whose bloodline includes a Mexican folk hero and Irish prime mover of the American labour movement (not to mention used VW car dealers if Jello Mould is autobiographical) and who currently calls south east London home. Working from an acoustic roots base, she weaves her way through the blues (Cheap Perfume a slow raunch with slide guitar), soul country (Galileo), country gospel (Out In The Light), sax hazed jazzy lopes (Strange Resistance), plangent guitar mid tempo poprock (Adam's Apple), desert noir soundscapes (Longing) and old school Bonnie Raitt (a useful comparison point) country rock (Out In The Light).Into The Deep with its comparisons between love and addiction serves as a good example of her lyrical flavours, many of the mostly love songs veined with physical and sexual imagery in which she's variously self-confessedly weak and defiantly strong. There's a sense of tension to the work, underlying her vocals too, which perhaps gives added resonance to a song titled I Purr and I Roar. Maybe that explains the photo of her in that cold bath!
Kathleen Haskard & Stacey Earle / The Borderline live review
Isle of Wight Rock
Back in one of my favourite London venues again. By eight thirty Kathleen Haskard has climbed onto the stage to grab her guitar. The American comes to the microphone to begin a confident set of songs. Small audience or not she plays like she is stood in front of full house. Lasso's the audience with her banter while laying down a moody, engaging handful of songs. Her voice is deep, a hint of jazz, some blues.What Kathleen Haskard gave was an all round performance. Some humour, a few digs at the 'corporate schemata' of things. 'Stacey and I figured that 12 per cent was not a good deal. OK so we started our own record labels so we could take 100 per cent. Now that's a good deal,' she laughed with a gleam in her eye. She also thanked the Borderline for providing '24 beers for Stacey and me' courtesy of the house. 'I mean 24 beers, we might be able to drink two a piece, so I've swapped mine for Margheritas,' she grinned. Then she fetched said Margherita from the small table at the back of the stage and proceeded to suck the iced drink through a straw up against the microphone. 'This is the third track on my CD, it's called Slurping,' she gurgled.
On this first listen I took to at least three of Kathleen Haskard's songs. One was called Galileo. It was about heartbreak. 'Gallieo would have seen it coming' she sang. Jello Mould was a bit of a rocker. I think this was the song that mentioned some of my favourite places like Tucumcari.
For her final song, Kathleen Haskard put her guitar away and asked the audience to help her by snapping their fingers along in time to a samba groove. From Oslo to Holland the songwriter had been teasing the audience by asking if there were any Englishmen in it. Her song concerns the reticent English stereotype lover. Just one of those typecast jokes we let our American cousins like Joan Baez get away with.