rfi c/d s/d KATE WOLF

you guys have anything to say about her?

ok fine. i've just decided to try her out and i'm liking it. a weird and obscure reference point perhaps, but it reminds me of kath bloom a bit.

i was surprised by how low kate wolf's voice is (was). i dunno why, but i always imagined this high, keening joni mitchell type thing.

also the music and lyrics is very sober, not at all flowery as i had also expected. more later?

actually i want to hear what ian and others have to say.

I think she's one of the best singer-songwriters. I love the "Here in California" compilation. Also, check out Nina Gerber's amazing guitar work on Kate's stuff.

I really like the one album of hers I have. However, it is New Year's and so I've been drinking & my memory is not quite up to snuff maybe. I'll check back. It's on Kaleidoscope records I think.

on some other thread I mentioned to ian that KW has always been big in the pacific northwest, there is an annual festival named after her in California.

http://www.katewolf.com/festival/2009.htm

man, did this thread take off.

mary mccaslin > kate wolf > rosalie sorrels

...

also, the one i have is "lines on the paper." I like it. there aren't any real stand out mindblowing tracks but it's pleasantly consistent.

her version of alice stuart's "full-time woman" is extraordinarily. it even eclipses most of her own songs (save for some things like "brother warrior" and "two way waltz"). the guitars are so close-miced, you can hear every scrape across the strings, it's very satisfying. wolf seems more "visionary" than e.g. mccaslin, who seems content working in a very modest, non-declamatory mode. wolf is a little more ambitious in her themes. i mean she has a song against nuclear war and stuff.

i do not think there's anything particularly ambitious about writing an anti-nuclear war song! if you mean to say that her songs were less political, i think i'd agree, though i can't clam much familiarity with her catalog at this point. i mean, i'm gonna listen to any Kate Wolf record I come across, but they don't seem to be super common here.

yeah she seems a weird combo of revered and completely unknown.

or maybe it's just that i have been hearing her name for almost 20 years without the volume or number of times i hear her name rarely reaching the point where i'm like, 'oh yeah, oughta check her stuff out.' she's just sort of there...barely...all the time.

just poetically ambitious. lots of elaborate metaphors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFmRA_UMVwY

my wife's a fan so we have a few cds but i admit i haven't really explored them. guess i should.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9wbaQ8g4a4

i must have listened to "You're Not Standing Like You Used To" 100x in the past month.

this fucking song.

"give yourself to love" sound uncomfortably like the song they sing at the sanitarium-cum-cult at the end of the todd haynes movie "safe." or is it the same song???

never seen the film, i dunno.

i love kate wolf.
i just got a double LP collection of stuff, some of which i've heard before, but it's all so great. i guess i'm gonna have to buy all of her records.

"give yourself to love" sound uncomfortably like the song they sing at the sanitarium-cum-cult at the end of the todd haynes movie "safe." or is it the same song???

― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 13 February 2010 00:05 (1 year ago)

ha! it's the same song. todd haynes hates kate wolf?

today's haul for about ten bucks

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/kw_zps0ff881a3.jpg?t=1366858453

one day when central coast folk starts to get hipster kisses she's going to be the vashti bunyan of the genre. so good.

'i'm not standing like i used to' is one of the saddest songs EVER

i don't think she'll ever get the same kind if hipster love as bunyan b/c she (or her records) have never really gone away and she doesn't have the slightly mysterious backstory. and her lyrics tend to be more straightforward, not elliptical. her voice is clear, the production is crisp and lovely but with no experimental pretensions.

i'm not sure how to feel about her IMO. she wrote some beautiful songs but there's something prissy and over-enunciated about her delivery that occasionally makes me want to grab the record from the turntable. todd haynes was kind of on point in putting "give yourself to love" in "safe." and yet and yet and yet.

my fave is probably her cover of alice stewart's "full time woman"

that particular song is also so beautifully recorded, wth.

also it has a more interesting guitar-vocal melodic counterpoint than almost any song kate wrote herself.

also apparently i am just repeating myself from upthread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXGzblg7Ws

Longtime fanner, first time poster. Come to think of it I don't know where/when I first heard her. Maybe the same same time/place I discovered Phish - in a van in Colorado in 91-92.

God I love her.

Me too! Surprised I haven't posted itt, I feel like I've talked about Kate Wolf somewhere on ilm. This is a perennial personal favorite — my wife and aunt sang it together at our wedding reception, just a gorgeous song. I think people mostly know it from the Nanci Griffith version, which is also great obv but can't improve on the original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Kn3j7o2yY

Weird. I played Other Voices, Other Rooms today for the first time in forever. This song is so classic, both versions

tipsy, you DID post in this thread, 13 years ago, to say you were going to explore her more because your partner was a fan <3

been listening to her so much lately, along w/ the 2nd mary mccaslin record.

Whoa I missed that on a quick read. Yep. Funnily enough, that was my former wife. Liking Kate Wolf, a rare throughline for my otherwise very different spouses.

Damn that's some.... heavy something.
a former ilxor i know might say... synchromystic.

Something’s in the air - I was listening to Poet’s Heart this morning.

her version of this paul siebel song.. absolute stunner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUF-ZIR7i9A

so great. i know its one of her most well-known songs but its just so perfect. i wish i could go see her live!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH9QnQdoKtY

jeez such a great version. makes me go oooooof. i never get tired of hearing her. that's me and sandy denny too. i don't listen to a lot of solo folk people. weirdly, there is a plainness to her music that really really appeals to me. maybe its the amish in me. unadorned. a little flat sometimes but in such a captivating way. captivating flatness! i wonder if marilynne robinson is a fan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXGzblg7Ws

I was gonna say how much I love her version of Then Came The Children, but I see that i did upthread....