Cat Rose Smith is an American country artist tackling the UK scene from London. At Live in the Living Room Gives Back, she spoke to me about the inspiration behind her new song, her dog Sawyer and what it means to be a Lady of the Lake.
Smith was part of Live in the Living Room Gives back at The Bedford pub in Balham, London, where country music artists and singer songwriters gathered to raise money for Dementia, UK. Owen Morgan, owner of Live Country LDN, put together the second writer's round of the day that hosted Jo Girdlestone, Rhiannon Paige and Cat Rose Smith.
Not long after the release of her new single, 'Silver Song', Smith spoke about how this track denotes a new chapter for her music. “It’s a little freaky for me because that marked my first song in a series of songs that I recorded that are really different stylistically,” she says as we chat after her set, squashed into our small, actually green, green room, “this was the first declaration of my new sound; rugged, folky, natural”.
Her previous song, ‘Tough Luck’, told the tale of an old miner who dreamt of striking rich – underpinning her own struggles on a long road of graft as an artist. With that in mind, I was keen to know the story behind her latest track, intrigued by lyrics conjuring images about ‘summers on the sea’ and a ‘child running to freshly fallen snow’. “It sounds corny,” she giggles, “but it’s my love of the Earth and different places across Earth that have meant a lot to me.” Each verse is a love letter to places she holds dear; the first verse is about Cape Cod where she grew up going to the beaches and the second verse is about Lake Tahoe where she fondly remembers the snow. “The third verse wraps it up with a bit of climate change tying it all in, so it’s a song very much about natural places that mean a lot to me.”
On Smith’s Spotify, her About the Artist section simply states, “lady of the lake” and with her love of the Earth out in the open, I was desperate to know what that meant. “Mostly I was just like this sounds like a weird acquatic creature,” she laughs as she recounts her story, “I had been watching shows and I’d watched one about a woman who haunted a lake and I was like, ‘that is what I want to be when I grow up’.” This is echoed in Smith’s new music that she says has more of a ‘supernatural, Americana’ sound to it.
There is an instant likeness to Kacey Musgrave’s new album, ‘Deeper Well’, in that Smith’s newer sound is more stripped back and plays into the folksier side of the genre. The album is a strong influence for Smith as she has ‘so much of that record on repeat’. “Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills and Nash just came back on to Spotify, so I’ve been celebrating that,” she says of the music she’s listening to at the minute.
Most artists on the UK country scene dream of making it big out in America but Cat Rose Smith has flipped this on its head, leaving the The Land of the Free behind and heading across the Atlantic to launch her career. “It weirdly made sense to me to come over to the UK as a country artist,” she says about the move she made two and a half years ago, “there’s less competition and you stand out a bit more.” Smith grew up in California and lived in LA for a while where she pursued music before coming over to the UK. Like many of us, she moved home to Seattle for a year during lockdown, “it was good practice to see if I could do London weather”. Although without a pair of wellies or a raincoat, Smith and ends up muddy and wet whenever she walks her dog, Sawyer. Smith is a ‘stepmom’ to Sawyer but, obviously, she likes her better now – especially if she sings to her the way she sang to us!
This year is a big year for Smith as she releases her new music. There’s a tease on her Instagram for her next track and she said that ther are a ‘bunch of new songs’ to come. “My band that I play with a lot are out on tour right now but while they were home, I had them record like five songs with me.” She will release these single by single and then wrap them all up together as an EP. She is also in the throes of one of life’s most stressful events – wedding planning. With all the important bits locked in, she’s just on to the (less fun) finer details with the three-month countdown underway. We can’t wait to see pictures!
You can follow Cat Rose Smith on all of her socials via her LinkTree
This interview was conducted in collaboration with Live in the Living Room
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