Following the worldwide success of debut album Talk To Me, Sheffield soul artist Kat Eaton tells Exposed how her second album revisits some integral early influences and pulls no punches lyrically.
Hi Kat, how are you getting on?
Good! We’ve been busy getting everything together for this tour, we’ve got some UK shows and some dates in Europe as well, so there’s plenty to do and sort out.
Not to mention doing promo for your latest album, Honestly, which is out now. How are you looking forward to taking that to the stage?
It can be a difficult one when you work on an album, finish it, and then have to talk about it much later on, because it can kind of feel like old news by then. I mean, we’ve already started working on the next album! However, me and Nick had a couple of rehearsals recently and it was really cool to hear some of these songs live for the first time. So, I was over it before we revisited these songs and I’m now really looking forward to the tour; the songs take on a new life.
Your debut record, Talk To Me, came out in 2021. How does this follow-up build on those foundations?
We loved that first record, and it has loads of fun influences in there from the likes of Mama’s Gun and Emily King. For this album, we were really inspired by Sheffield musician Frank White, who sadly passed away in March 2020, and we wanted to make something that was a bit of a homage to him and all the music we grew up listening to, so Nick wrote a song called ‘Saturday Night at the NBT’ which was about going the New Barrack Tavern with Frank and playing/watching live music. So, this album goes back to the roots of the music we loved when we used to go and see Frank – a lot of gospel, blues and rock ‘n’ roll. It was an itch we wanted to scratch, and we’ve done it.
Frank sounded like a real force of nature as a personality, and he was also clearly quite influential on your career?
Yes, for both me and my husband, Nick, who’s also my songwriting partner and producer. Me and Nick got together when we were 16 and our first gig was going to see Frank play, and Frank later got us our first gig, at the Crown in Totley. He was very influential in the early days in terms of telling us to write and perform the music we love rather than worrying about stuff that we thought was cool or on-trend. In school, me and Nick were playing blues, jazz, soul and rock ‘n’ roll while a lot of others were listening to Linkin Park and Foo Fighters. We’d go and see Frank almost every weekend – we must have seen him at The Pheasant a thousand times – and he showed us that you could have a career in music, but you didn’t have to reach the status of Bruce Springsteen or Beyonce. It doesn’t have to be about becoming a superstar.
this album goes back to the roots of the music we loved when we used to go and see Frank – a lot of gospel, blues and rock ‘n’ roll.
They seem like important lessons to learn as an aspiring musician. It feels like these days, there’s increasing pressure on young musicians to continuously push and promote themselves on social media. It must feel like a constant anxiety.
Yeah, it’s awful. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to start being a musician in this day and age when everything is so saturated and you have to put on your best self all the time. But it’s interesting because whenever I’ve been honest or vulnerable through social media, I’ve had a really good reception from it. You know, rather than going around saying “everything’s brilliant”. Of course, everything’s not brilliant; it’s a f*cking nightmare at times and you have huge existential crises and there’s a lot of insecurity and you feel only as good as your last piece of work. I’ve tried to be as open and honest as possible with this album, hence the name, and I suppose just to fight against the pretence of always putting on your best and bravest face. That’s bullshit. We all struggle, and it is what it is.
On that note, what would you most like people to take away from this record?
I hope they enjoy it; I hope they can have a dance, a laugh and a cry. I hope that they can take something of Frank away from the record and feel and hear the history of what we’ve experienced with Frank and the Sheffield music scene. I also hope it brings people a bit of solace and they feel seen.
You can stream Kat’s new album, ‘Honestly’, on all major streaming platforms now. Photography: Chris Saunders
Ok, let’s finish off with some quickfire Qs. What was the first record you bought…
‘How Deep Is Your Love’ by Take That, which I would’ve bought from Virgin Megastores on the corner of Fargate. Maybe not the coolest, but it’s definitely the first one I can remember getting in my hand. This was before I started listening to blues and soul! The next one would’be have been an album by The Offspring, who I still love to be honest.
First gig?
The first gig I played was ‘Battle of the Bands’ at Silverdale school in Sheffield. Nick wrote a song and we also performed a cover, which I think might’ve been ‘Further on Up the Road’. The second gig was at The Boardwalk, where we did a few covers including Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker and BB King.
A song you wish you’d written?
I really love ‘Distance’ by Emily King. It’s beautiful and really clever.
When did you first fall in love with music?
Growing up, I listened to so much music with my dad. He would put a record on in the morning to wake us up. I remember listening to Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd and just thinking it was genius. I had the opportunity to listen to music with my dad and not feeling embarrassed to show emotion at it; we would just sit there in silence, reading the sleeves and taking it all in. The sun would be coming through the window and we’d have this quiet, contemplative moment without any other distractions. It was a beautiful thing to do.
What’s a song you can’t get out of your head?
I’m going to say ‘I Need a Win’ by Mama’s Gun. It’s a very cool song.
And a song that reminds you of a specific time and place?
Oh, Incubus and another called ‘Wish You Were Here’! It reminds me of being a 14-year-old teenager, and my boyfriend at the time ripped the album and gave me a copy with a printed- out cover. It just reminds me of listening to that song in my bedroom during the summer. Good times.
Complete this sentence: music allows me to…
Vent. Express myself. It allows me to understand myself and the world. It allows me to connect with all sorts of people, which is an amazing thing to do, isn’t it? So, yeah – it allows me to connect with others and feel connected myself.
Honestly is out now. Kat Eaton plays Yellow Arch on 28 June, tickets (£15) available now from www.kateaton.com.
