Kat Danser is an enigmatic artist with a fascinating background story. With a PhD in ethnomusicology, you just know that it’s going to be an amalgam of cultural influences and flair. With a name like Kat Danser, how could she have become anything other than a musician – and what a talent she is – the woman’s a complete character, a queen of quirk – a cigar puffing maverick. The opening lassos us straight in there. This is one strong woman and she’s going to take no nonsense – you heard me.
Hair turned grey and I must say, I’m feeling freer every day.
‘Way I Like It Done’ is opinionated, humorous – she’s “got the menopausal call” and clearly, frankly my dear, she doesn’t give a damn what you or anyone else thinks. I like her already. I also like the blast of the opening bars. The full horn section welcomes us in full flow and that glorious horn sound features on six of the albums ten tracks, reflecting her passion for Afro-Cuban Jazz and the place where it intersects with traditional New Orleans music.
The horn section (featuring Dominic Conway, Jeremy Cook, and Malcolm Aiken) was produced in real-time from Nashville where the players stood 15 feet apart from each other, while Kat watched the full session from her home in Edmonton. Written and recorded throughout the pandemic, it pays tribute to her versatility and determination.
While purely steeped in the blues, her musical acumen, skill, and knowledge flits into full-blown punk rock in ‘One Eye Closed’. Raw, puritanically punk in flavour, it shakes up and shuffles the rest of the pack. As Stiff Little Fingers’ first album ‘Inflammable Material’ turned 42 last week, punk is still alive and well, thanks Kat Danser.
This album is full of different flavours, tastes, and cultural influences. In a time when we can’t travel further than a few kilometers from our own front doors, Kat takes us on a whirlwind tour of where her passion for the blues transpires mapping a trail from the dead heat of the Mississippi Delta, through the winding alleyways of Havana, to the smoky confines of a cigar club in Edmonton. Kat Danser explores the sounds, the smells, the beat of wherever she is – and transforms it into a full-on musical sensory experience. She crosses decades and continents, with the unifying language of music.
She connects with the raw emotional power of the beat whether that’s in the blues or punk or traditional folk. This is her sixth album and continues her ongoing collaboration with guitarist and producer Steve Dawson and an ensemble of some of North America’s finest. The core band of Dawson, Gary Craig (drums), and Jeremy Holmes (bass) was not able to record in the same room together. They had to assemble the album remotely. So with Kat in Edmonton, the others dotted around the states, and Dawson in Nashville, the result is as organic and intuitive as possible. You’d never guess, but thank you modern technology in the age of Covid – creativity, just like nature, will always find a way.
From that gutsy opening track to the slower, somewhat sad rendition of ‘Lonely and the Dragon’, or ‘Please, Don’t Cry’ to robust, upbeat, rollicking tunes whatever style or vocals she attunes to, whether its Patsy Kline or Etta James, her talent is on full throttle.
With eight original tracks and two covers – Jessie Mae Hemphill’s ‘Get Right Church’ and ‘Bring It With You When You Come’ by Gus Cannon – ‘One Eye Open’ is brash, bold, big, beautiful, brittle, and explosively good fun, with a little vulnerability and sensitivity added for good measure. In other words, it’s exactly how Kat describes the blues:
It gives us a place to bring all our hope and all our sorrow.