Kristi Kates

Raised in a household full of music and art and schooled in both the U.S. and Europe, Kristi Kates began her fascination with music - most specifically The Beatles and Britpop - at an early age. Teaching herself to play guitar and piano, she began writing songs, singing her own harmonies and bouncing tracks back and forth between two cheap cassette players until she saved up enough to purchase a 4-track recorder. She also bounced between several cover bands throughout her teens - The Trinkets and Orange Crush being two of them - but it wasn't long before she tired of singing cover songs and struck out on her own.
She began performing in coffeehouses, later charming her way into bars while still underage for the sole purpose of watching live music and sitting in to sing with bands. The 4-track recorder began collecting dust - it was no longer enough to translate all of her musical ideas. So she gathered some studio musicians and entered a "real" recording facility to complete her first recording venture, an EP called Wonderful, the prelude to her first full-length disc, Tangle, on which she wrote all the music and lyrics.
Next up was her first solo trip to New York City, where she stayed with friends, subsisted on a daily bagel and juice, braved the subway for the first time, and walked for hours through the streets of Manhattan armed with a tin of Bandaids for her weary feet and a list of record company addresses that she'd nicked from a bookstore copy of an industry guide. Late on her last day in the City, she met engineer Paul Smith (Thirst, U2) by chance outside The Hit Factory studios, and the demo that she left with him led to Smith offering to produce Kristi's next CD, The Avenue A Sessions EP, which was recorded in NYC with members of Thirst (including Mark Christensen on backing vocals and Lex Dunbar on drums) serving as Kristi's studio band along with guitarist Brandon Evans and keyboardist Scott Morley - in trade, Kristi sang backing vocals on Thirst's album, The Dangerous Cousin of Dogmatism. A spare, unplugged version of "If I," was also caught on tape during these sessions, featuring just guitar and Kristi's haunting vocal, and was recently released as a special edition CD single.
Since then, she's seen her songs garner airplay stateside as well as in Australia, Belgium, Scotland, the Netherlands, and Turkey, and has played a variety of live shows across the U.S. Her "All These Days" music video (see it below) won Best in Show in the Music Video category at the Vox Populi Film Festival. And, most recently, she contributed an original song and a cameo appearance to the E. Manthei indie film Life Unexamined, which showcased late last year at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival.
Currently, Kristi is in the studio tracking her latest set of songs, and plans a new CD release for early in 2008. She also just wrapped filming on a music video for her new song White Noise; release of the video, which was shot in downtown Los Angeles and out in the wilds of the Coachella Valley desert, will likely coincide with the release of the album. Other than recording, Kristi's plans for the fall include figuring out where she left her keys (again), and calculating how many leaves it takes to make the perfect autumn leaf pile. Check back here for updates, and thanks for visiting!
Click the PLAY arrow below to watch Kristi's "All These Days" music video
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