Episode 5 - Kathryn Williams

Songwriting For Songwriters

Episode 5 - Kathryn Williams - Songwriting For Songwriters Podcast

This weeks Elijah’s guest is the much loved and respected Mercury Music Prize nominee Kathryn Williams. They discuss Kathryn’s songs, her songwriting process, her love of capturing life through art and song, what it’s like being a songwriter and the life lessons learnt along the way.

Check out Kathryn’s beautiful songs here: https://www.kathrynwilliams.co.uk/

Full Biog -

In this new musical world when we talk about an artist’s body of work, we tend to think of a handful of records stretched out across of a handful of years, if we’re lucky. A changing industry and a focus on immediacy has done little to alter such notions, which makes Kathryn Williams something of an anomaly - releasing eleven full-length albums under her own name (and more with various side-projects) since her debut LP, Dog Leap Stairs, was released in 1999 via her own CAW Records label.

As impressive a stat as that might be, it does little to capture the true magic of Williams work; the enchanting craft that has grown and expanded as she’s moved from one project to the next, from the breakthrough success of her Mercury Prize nominated Little Black NumbersLP all the way to her Sylvia Plath tribute project and 2017’sGreatest Hitscollection - not a greatest hits at all, in fact, rather an imagined retrospective for a fictional artist and an inspired soundtrack to Laura Barnett’s novel of the same name.

So how do we capture that magic? One way is to pick them apart, piece-by-piece, admiring the craft that goes in to them, that elegant vocal, the eloquent way with words. Another is to simply allow these records to be absorbed, one at a time, project by project, as music should be. From dusty Americana to playful jazz re-workings, and so much more besides, every record Williams puts her name to burns with a meticulousness and an honesty that casts a spell all of her own making, following in the shadow of the listener for days at a time, for years to come.

While her best-known work is characterised by rich and honest songwriting, inspired by the greats - from Nick Drake to Joni Mitchell and beyond - Williams has continually been able to evolve as an artist because she’s always looked outside of such genre boundaries. “The things that influence you aren’t necessarily going to come out in obvious ways, unless you’re trying to copy,” she said in a 2007 interview. “I don’t sound like Lou Reed or Tom Waits. But when I listen to them, I learn.”

That aforementioned debut record, Dog Leap Stairs, which was recorded for just £80, drew favourable reviews upon release but it was Williams second record, Little Black Numbers, that saw her reputation blossom, garnering significant critical praise and earning a shortlist nomination for the much-coveted Mercury Music Prize. Continuing her somewhat prolific release schedule, 2002 brought her third album, Old Low Light, which was swiftly followed in 2004 with ‘Relations’ - a covers record which included subtle reworkings of Big Star, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen on more.

In 2006, Williams worked with producer Kate St John, who would go on to produce 2010’s The QuickeningLP, the result being Leave To Remain, Williams’ sixth studio album, and one that The Guardian claimed to be 'both beautiful and intense, her best album yet’. There was another record, of course, between these two St John-produced LPs; a collaboration with Neill MacColl, whose father, Ewan MacColl, wrote ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’, which...