Kate Walsh, Exeter Phoenix, Monday 5th October, 8pm
Kate Walsh, the Brighton-based singer-songwriter whose unsigned, home-made album, Tim’s House, was an iTunes sensation in 2007 – knocking Take That off the number 1 spot – returns with a brand new album and tour from late September.
Light and Dark was produced by Tim Bidwell and mixed by Andy Green, and features guest appearances from Turin Brakes and Crispin Hunt from her favourite band Longpigs.
Producer Lee Russell, who noticed her amazing potential and secured her an immediate publishing deal with Warner-Chappell for her first album, initially discovered Kate Walsh six years ago in her hometown of Burton-On-Crouch in Essex. It somehow didn’t work out, and the deal was off pretty soon afterwards, but it seems that Kate Walsh’s career and work has been all the better for it since.
A fiercely independent self-made woman, Kate simply took the plunge of releasing her own album ‘Tim’s House’ on her home-made record label called Blueberry Pie. There was never before a female UK artist of her age who knocked huge established acts such as Take That and the Kaiser Chiefs off the top of the very democratic iTunes download album chart.
The girl’s clearly got what it takes and she knows how to think for herself too. Unlike most of her peers, she apparently doesn’t own an iPod or a television. With a classical piano training from the age of five, she still counts composer Claude Debussy as a key influence on her sense of melody, but she has also learned from Joni Mitchell, Talk Talk, The Longpigs, Tori Amos, to name but a few. Her intelligent, soothing and richly sensual songs show a maturity and finesse way beyond her years.
She is back at Exeter Phoenix for one night only as part of her UK tour to promote her new album Light and Dark.