Every once in a while as a voice teacher, I have the chance to work with a student who walks into my studio with a naturally great voice looking to perfect and polish their music. That’s what I found when Kate Hinote came to my studio with her beautiful voice. You can
read the review of her latest album,
Watercolor Ghost Town on my personal site, but for my readers I wanted to offer insights into the vocal and business life of a working musician.
Thanks for sharing with my readers! As a natural talent, tell me about the advantages/disadvantages you feel you face vocally?
Kate: Well, that’s incredibly kind. Natural talent…I like it! I never think of it like that, but I guess that’s accurate. I am a firm believer that you have to have some natural ability to be able to sing. You can’t take someone that flat out can’t sing and turn them into a singer.
With that said, I’d say the greatest advantage would be the ability to sing in key and having a pleasant tone. However, because I have to sing in loud, smoky bars and am susceptible to nerves, singing in key and not over-extending my vo
ice (resulting in a husky, not so pleasant tone) is a constant battle at live shows.
One disadvantage would be that I never felt the need for proper training and I’ve spent years taking my voice for granted, which resulted in a semi-disaster last year and ultimately led me to finally seek out some proper training, and then I found you.
WTV: Talk about bit about your vocal troubles, what happened, how you recovered, what you learned from formal voice lessons that you feel was most helpful.
Kate: To keep a VERY long story short, in March of 2008, I had a terrible upper respiratory cold and because we were in the process of writing for our latest album, I sang a great deal one particular day on an unhealthy voice and blew out about three notes of the high end of my mid-range. I didn’t discover it until weeks later when we were beginning rehearsals for a charity event, and we ultimately had to cancel because the notes were gone and I couldn’t find a way around the problem.
It was terrifying. Even though I had recovered from the cold I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I saw two different ENT's [ear, nose, and throat doctors] who told me it was acid reflux, and I even tried some reflux medications, but not for long. I couldn’t believe that after all these years, all of a sudden, acid was going to make three notes of my range vanish. Let me clarify here by saying that those three notes did come out every now and then, but on those occasions, I sounded like Chewbacca.
Anyway, after a month or so of the different reflux medications and doctors, I was prescribed vocal therapy. This was an enlightening experience. I saw charts that diagramed different parameters of my voice and where it was going “wonky”. I did the vocal therapy for about two months, which included as much vocal rest as possible, a low-acid diet, and speaking quietly all the time. I was supposed to avoid real laughter and shouting. I did pretty well with this, but I’m not gonna lie and say I was perfect. I’m married and live with three cats and a dog. Sometimes there was shouting and sometimes there was laughter. At the end, I had learned a lot about taking better care of my voice and the charts and diagrams said I was better. At that point, I eased very carefully back into singing and looked into voice lessons.
I don’t think I could have found a better match in a voice teacher, as far as what I was looking for at that moment and I’m so glad I found you. Learning to sing without straining and focusing more on just letting the sound out, rather than pushing it out, was essential at that time. I noticed a HUGE difference within a few lessons. While it took some time for me to gain confidence in that part of my range again (note: I’m still not entirely comfortable and we eventually cut a song from the set that had caused me the most trouble during all of this), my consistency in pitch improved greatly and I learned the importance of warming up. I was a fool that didn’t do vocal warm ups. Now I know how important they are and I’ve actually seen how they help and protect my voice.
To me, the moral of this story is 1) NEVER sing when you have any sort of upper respiratory illness, and 2) ALWAYS warm up, and not just the day you are going to sing.
WTV: I don't know if I ever heard Chewbacca sounds, but we're always harder on ourselves as singers. : ) Tell me how you approach song-writing as a singer? Are there challenges you have had to overcome? How do you collaborate with your band members?
Kate: Well, considering I haven’t been doing it very long, I can’t say I have a definite approach. So far it’s gone like this: Tony writes a song (the music) and puts it in the public drop box on our computer. Then, when I feel some sort of inspiration or Tony asks me repeatedly to “work on music”, I sit down in front of the computer, listen to any tracks that he’s left in the drop box for me, and just keep listening.
Considering that he writes three or four songs for every one I finish, it’s safe to say that he’s far more prolific than I am and songwriting comes more easily to him. The melody always comes to me first, and fairly easily. It’s the lyrics that give me a hard time. I don’t claim to be a poet or lyricist, so that’s what I’ve struggled with more than anything over the years.
I’ve managed to come up with some stuff that I’m really proud of, but I can say that we’d have more material if lyrics came easier to me! Generally though, I’ll get one phrase or line that I really, really like and then work my way through the song around that. I’m confident this is not a normal process, but it’s gotten us three albums and an EP that we’re incredibly proud of, so I’m sticking with it (for now).
As for the other members, they don’t contribute to the writing, but they add their own “flavor”, for lack of a better word, to their parts. Tony does all the recording/engineering/producing, so it’s easy for them to sit down to record, tweek, and experiment with different things. This album, Watercolor Ghost Town, was the most collaborative effort Tony has made since I’ve been in a band with him and I think that shows in the finished product and it’s, at least for me, part of the reason I’m so proud of it.
WTV: I'd agree with that assessment. The album is great! The production, instrumentation, and musicianship of the entire band shines, along with your voice. I'd like to ask you about "the business." Can you talk about keeping a band going? How do you manage multiple schedules and needs of members? How do you handle financing projects and payments for gigs?
Kate: I’m not certain, but I think our band is more laid back than other bands. For starters, we’re not that young (with the exception of our bass player, Erica, who is still in her 20’s) and we all have day jobs. In addition to that, all the boys in the band (Tony, Marvin and Dave) have been playing in bands, and in “the scene”, for 20+ years. I don’t want to speak for them, but I’d guess they’ve seen their share of things and are doing this more for the creative aspect and the camaraderie.
Other than a brief stint in the late 90’s, fronting a band for what was the equivalent of 30 seconds in this industry, this is my first band, which makes me pretty excitable and hopeful. None of us are quite as optimistic as Erica, which brings a great vibe and just enough seriousness to keep us motivated. In short, we’re not doing this to “make it” so much as to make good songs that people (including us) want to listen to or can relate to in some way. It’d be fantastic to get paid to do what we love, and to get any sort of recognition for it, but we’re certainly not banking on it.
It’s fairly easy to keep the band going because we’re all friends, we maintain a light rehearsal schedule and we’re very accommodating to each other out of mutual respect and understanding that we all have lives outside of this band, and more importantly, lives that pay our bills.
We haven’t really gotten to the point where we’re bringing in money, so finances haven’t really become an issue yet. Because Tony and I get all of the songwriting credit, so ultimately any credit with ASCAP, most financial stuff falls on us, but we’ve gotten some help when needed. Specifically, Erica finances our involvement with
Sonicbids, which is a website that helps bands find gigs and promoters find bands. We’ve been able to get a couple cool gigs out of it, but for bands that have much more flexible schedules, it’s a great way to get into (or at least apply for) some festivals and bigger shows.
With regard to CD sales, since we produced/financed the album ourselves, without the support of a label, we haven’t broken even on the album yet. I’d say that’s the hardest part about not being backed by some sort of label. But we’re available for download on iTunes and Napster, and we sell our physical CD through CD Baby, so we’re definitely available, but so are a million other bands. That makes it hard to get noticed without someone behind you, rooting for you, believing in you and trying to get your name out there, and basically…trying to make money off of you.
When we get paid for a live show, we split it as close to five ways as possible. Ultimately, I think placement in commercials and TV shows is an ideal way to get attention at the moment. We’re looking into our options there and that’s something we’re fairly optimistic about.
WTV: A big part of having a band is the branding/marketing aspect. I'm interested to know why you recently changed your band name?
Kate: Tony and I began in late 2004 as Ether Aura, with our friends William and Bret and we were writing shoegaze/ethereal/indie-rock and having an awesome time. We released Crash in February 2005 and got a lot of positive feedback. I was new to writing, so we sort of stumbled upon my penchant for writing in the whole alt-country/Americana genre. Those came to me naturally, I guess you could say. In addition to that, we had just discovered Neko Case and have always loved Patsy Cline and Tarnation. So, we added a second guitar player, Alex, and a tiny bit more alt-country flavor to our second album, Before We Could Sing, but it still came out pretty indie-rock.
After that release, both Bret and William decided to do other things, and we released an EP, Semblance, with a few acoustic type covers in the Americana/folk genre, along with an original we’d written. Shortly after that, we replaced our rhythm section with Marvin and Erica and dove into writing again for what would be our third release as Ether Aura. Throughout that process, as we kept writing, we felt like the direction had changed enough that we started to feel like it wasn’t fair to keep releasing albums as Ether Aura, knowing people would expect the same noisy, ethereal, reverby sound they’d been drawn to. It didn’t help that I got several personal e-mails from fans saying they wished we’d go back to how we used to be. By the end of the year, Alex had left the band and was replaced by the fun-loving, goofball, Dave, who brought a light and fun vibe to things. So, really, we felt like an entirely different band and decided to leave Ether Aura in the past and become…The Blueflowers.
WTV: I'm thrilled Kate decided to share her vocal and band history with us. Despite her considerable modesty - she and her band are light years ahead of many people who claim they want to be singers and band members. I think the key with pursuing music, whether you are banking on making it big or not, is consistency and stick-to-it-ness. Kate and The Blueflowers have that for sure.
And as a performer and voice teacher, I know that it is only with that kind of consistency that the artistry can be developed to make great music people want to listen to - and The Blueflowers have that too!
