From the gospel songs she sang in school to the country classics she heard in her father’s truck as an Austin, Texas teenager, emerging country music artist KATE CLARK grew up surrounded by music. It was her passion. Her therapy. Her bond with the outside world. Years before she moved to Nashville and began launching her career as a singer/songwriter, Kate fell in love with music’s ability to connect and console.
Back then, her life seemed to unfold like a country song. Her father drank a lot, ultimately leaving the family when Kate was young. Raised by a single mom in Austin, she bonded with her absentee dad during his brief visits to town, when the two would ride around the Texas hill country in his truck. Sometimes, they’d talk. Other times, they’d just listen to music. Songs by George Strait, Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings became the unofficial soundtrack to those father/daughter joyrides. Decades later, Kate still remembers how that music made her feel.
“Country music was something I shared with my dad,” she explains. “It was our thing. It made us both feel like we were part of some bigger picture, when there wasn’t anything else we could be a part of. My dad consumed country music like it was water—the water he needed to survive and to help dilute the demons behind the alcohol. We both connected with it, and that helped us connect with each other.”
Kate also continued exploring music on her own by developing an expressive, elastic voice and a sharp sense of songwriting. While attending a fine arts high school in an urban neighborhood, she became a standout singer in the school’s gospel choir. The experience added a soulful swagger to her voice. Soon after graduation, she began to pursue her career in music by playing small local clubs in Austin. She also landed a bit part in a local indie film titled Band Slam (the cast also included country music radio personality Bobby Bones). Looking to try her hand at acting along with her solo career, Kate bought a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles, a city that was just as diverse as her musical tastes.
In Los Angeles, she first worked as a production assistant while trying her hand at auditioning for film and TV roles. It was while doing this P.A. job that she learned the craft of audio production and recording on Pro Tools, and before long she began assisting the engineer in sessions as needed. These newly learned technical skills made it possible for Kate to record some of her own song demos, helping to pave the way toward her one-day dream job as a singer and songwriter. Meanwhile, although not a role she would utilize her voice with, she landed a stand-in and body double role for Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2 as well as a small on-screen part in the film.
Kate’s next big break was more in line with her career goals, to use her superb vocal ability. An opportunity presented itself via an engineer friend who helped Kate secure a huge singing role, albeit once again behind-the-scenes, in the box office bonanza, Pitch Perfect, and its sequel Pitch Perfect 2. In both movies, she served as the singing voice of many characters, including the movie’s star Brittany Snow. This proved to be another magnificent experience, yet it intensified the longing she felt to share her own voice and her own songs.
It was while spending the weekend at the Stagecoach festival in Indio, CA with friends and being immersed in the country music that she loved, she felt compelled to finally make the move to Nashville and start focusing on her own music. There, she spent a few years writing songs in private, developing her songwriter “voice” and honing a sound inspired by her Texas roots, her music influences, her cross-country travels, and—ultimately—the loss of her father.
“I didn’t write for a month after he passed,” she remembers. “And then, something just clicked. I had this moment where I was a kid again, in his car, listening to this music in the hills of Texas, just driving around aimlessly. I suddenly knew the kind of music I needed to make. It wasn’t just a sound; it was a feeling, too. If I wasn’t writing music that made me feel like I was right there with him in the truck, it wasn’t right.”
With original songs like “No Halo,” “Last Names” and “Chasing the Real Thing” and her distinctive voice that reels in the listener, Kate Clark turns the challenges of the past into cathartic music that’s bright, bold, and soulful. This is her own brand of hook-filled country music, rooted in rich storytelling and punctuated by the acclaimed producer and her collaborator David Huff. The stories themselves may be sourced from her own life, but they’re applicable to anyone who, like Kate, has worked to turn obstacles into opportunities.
Kate describes her music by saying that “it’s a melting pot of old-school and new-school.” She began releasing a series of singles in early 2021–launching with her self-penned “No Halo”–and then alternating between original tracks and striking reinterpretations of songs by Oasis (“Wonderwall”), the Doobie Brothers (“Black Water”), and Justin Timberlake (“Drink You Away”). “There’s a Friday Night Lights hometown feel to the songs, but people can identify with them no matter where they grew up. As a child, it was through music that I felt seen and heard. I want to do that for other people who are looking for a similar connection. I want to remind them that they can put on a pair of headphones, press play, and know they’re going to be OK.”
