in a house by the sea

Genesis by Kat (me)

i wrote this song this morning on the same piano where i met the Lord seven years ago.
there’s been a special kind of power to be back here, on this same island, in this same home, on this same hardwood floor of the living room, in the same place where He first drew me into love with Him.

it’s just me and the piano; i wanted to share it in the same honest way that it was written and in the same way that i have spent so many days in past years singing out to Him in this little home. (plus you know i just have soo much patience and commitment to making recordings the best they can be…)

lately I’m so wrecked by his overwhelming faithfulness and goodness and by a hunger to know Him so much more.

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Fancy Idea by Kat (me)

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Bandcamp.

Prom, Promised Land by Kat (me)

i almost forgot to share about this.. a boy wrote me the other day and asked if i would write a song for his girlfriend, asking her to go to the prom with him. haha. definitely a first. but i couldn’t help myself; i had to do it, and i had so much fun making this little tune.
a few hours after receiving his email, this is what i sent him.

(she said yes!)

i haven’t posted any music sketches or songs in a while.. some recording is in standstill/process mode for a group project that is in the works. some of you know of it, and i’m excited for when it does all finally come together.. i have a good feeling about the summer…
in the meantime i’ve started to journey and fiddle and write with my dear friend whitney.. such an honor… here’s a scrap of what we’ve first begun assembling.. it isn’t much, and i’m sad we didn’t record her banjo playing in this bit, but there is more to come..
love you all dearly.

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear by Kat (me)

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I recorded a version of this last year but was messing around the other day and came up with this new melody for this Christmas classic.. Recorded this dainty little version on my parents’ roof in the past hour, and here you go. It’s a little messy, but you know that all my songs are.

I know I’m cutting it close, with Christmas in two days, but sometimes it’s tricky to get in the Christmas spirit when you live on a couple of tropical islands.
Happy Christmas everyone!

All my love,
Kat

Secret by Kat (me)

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Found an old beat up Spanish guitar lying around my house today. I don’t know where it came from, but I brought it up to my roof and wrote this song.

Withal by Kat (me)

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Sometime tonight, throughout the turning and absorbing of content-heavy textbook pages, I managed to scribble four pages of sputtered words in poetic form, explaining the sequence of my day.
I intended to share them, but instead came home and wrote this diary sketch of a song in a matter of ten minutes.
Funny, how something so simple can seem to make more sense than the elaborate.
Four-page summary aside, today was lavish with exhaustion, dehydration, festivity, camera-clicking, listless mind-wandering, hours of study, unfortunate church-skipping, gratifying fruitfulness, and immensely meaningful conversations.

Dandelion by Kat (me)

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I wrote this song tonight in a Northern California home for a family of dear friends on the other side of the country. I don’t have my microphone here, nor do I currently have any decent audio recording programs on my laptop. I have the built-in microphone on my mac and a free recording software that I downloaded from the internet. The result is this fairly awful recording of a song that I mean with all of my heart.

I’d really much rather be playing this for you all in the closeness of a dark basement or sleeping bag living room.

But here it is instead; I rode a bicycle through the cold night of an unfamiliar city to sit at the bar of this cafe and send this song to you like a letter.
You all know that you have my heart.

Hide by Kat (me)

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Half a Dozen by Kat (me)

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Lie Down Runner by Kat (me)

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Towering Hollows by Kat (me)

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     The song I mourned over just days ago and swore I would never share. I should’ve known better than to think I wouldn’t talk myself into sharing it anyways…

     Honestly, I think my biggest problem with this song is that it’s not one of those songs that you would want to listen to over and over again. It’s kind of a one-time showing—you hear it, you follow the story-line, come to the final page, and just like a book, you close the binding and put it back on the shelf to collect its blanket of dust.
     I’m not actually sure if there’s anything wrong with a song like that; maybe it’s just the emphasis on self-gratification, quick fixes, and pleasure that seems to dictate the appetite of our culture these days and makes us feel like if we’re not instantly addicted to a song, it isn’t any good.
     Music is the background noise—the mood setter, and if you can’t set the pace right in the first 10 seconds, it’s off to the next track or Pandora station.
     But the style of this song was a stretch for me. It’s definitely not what I would consider to be my thriving sound, but it is what I was intentionally trying to create—dark lounge music, if you will. The kind where the room is filled with smoke and lonely people, and the piano player is singing, but seemingly only to himself, or to the ivory keys, or to someone standing on the other side of the wall that he’s staring at, but definitely not to anyone else in the room.
     It was a rainy day, and I had spent the bulk of it alone in the corner of towering bookshelves in the campus library. Dusk was falling, the rain was getting heavier, and I was reading a newspaper about musicians in London while keeping an eye out the window for a break in the rain so I could make my way to the bus stop before it got too late.
     The song came to me in the drizzling walk across campus, and more specifically while waiting for the bus in the partially protective shelter of a tree. That notepad is now stiff from the rain.
     I knew I wanted it to be on the piano, even though the piano is not my specialty; unfortunately, no instrument is. I was hoping for it to be something I would be proud of, but I’m not actually proud of this song. I’m not sure why I enjoy humbling myself by sharing work I’m not proud of, but there’s something about the honest sketchbook of an artist that I oftentimes find more beautiful than a completed and perfected portfolio.

     This song needs more, but I’ve reached the limit of what I plan to invest in it, especially now that I’ve declared it a lost cause.

     And yes, I am posting it directly after a wonderful song by my dear friends that I am more than quite proud of, so I’m going all out on the whole humbling myself kick.

Take me as I am :] I love you guys.

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