Eclectic singer-songwriter Katie Herzig recently started the latest leg of her tour for her most recent album, “The Waking Sleep.” After a nine-year stint with the Colorado band Newcomers Home, Herzig launched a solo career with “Watch Them Fall” in 2004. Her music has been featured on TV shows such as “Smallville,” “One Tree Hill,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Bored to Death.”
Herzig now resides in Nashville, Tenn., but GO spoke to her from a tour stop in her old stomping grounds of Boulder, Colo., in advance of Friday’s Portland gig at Empire Dine & Dance.
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The Boulder show is a hometown show for you, isn’t it?
It is, totally. I grew up in Fort Collins and I went to college in Boulder, and I used to be in a band based in Boulder (Newcomers Home).
You have a journalism degree?
I do. I started out in news editorial and ended up in broadcast production trying to make documentary-type things, and in the end graduated with also another degree of being in a band (laughs).
There’s so much that can be said about the wonderful album “The Waking Sleep.” At the moment, what is your favorite song on it?
I would say probably the last one, “Daisies and Pews.”
That song has so much going in, it’s like a hymn.
It was one of those songs that felt like I was just writing a random poem or something, and then I just never wanted the song to end, so I just kept it going.
Have you considered having someone remix the song “Free My Mind”?
They have! RAC remixed it a couple of months ago, and I actually really like the remix. It’s on iTunes and it’s on the RAC SoundCloud page. RAC stands for Remix Artist Collective. The guy that did my song is Andre Anjos.
Who’s playing with you live in the touring band?
It’s a full band, to kind of represent as much as I can of the record. I’ve toured for the past several years with Claire Indie (cello) and Jordan Hamlin (guitar), and they’re gonna be with me still, and then for this tour we have two new players: drummer Billy Brimblecom and a guy named Greg LaFollette who plays bass and keys. I’m playing acoustic guitar, electric guitar and some piano.
The video to “Make a Noise” is really terrific. Why was it important for you to make it?
That was a song that I kind of wrote just to remind myself to kind of speak out for things I believe in. How I wanted to communicate that wasn’t really specifically; I didn’t want it to have a certain political agenda or anything like that. I just wanted whoever’s watching it to interpret it as using whatever it is you have to speak out with, and with me, that was music and art. So it was just kind of using that idea, and it’s just kind of me on this journey of expressing how I felt in some way.
There’ so much going on with “The Waking Sleep” album as a whole in that there’s so many layers and different sound effects. Obviously, you can’t recreate all of that during the live show, so how does that work?
It’s tough. You kind of have to pick and choose what are the most important parts to translate. It’s taken some time. We toured with the new band for a lot of the fall and as that tour went on, we were able to weed out a lot and define the most important parts. So for this tour, we’re building off of that and experimenting even more with how to incorporate those sounds. On three of the songs, we are playing to a track that has some samples of things from the album, which is really fun. I’ve never done that before.
What is inspiring or stirring you up in your life right now?
Musically, I kind of got on the bandwagon late for Bon Iver, but I’m really into their latest stuff. That has been inspiring to me. I traveled in Australia for the month of January. I just kind of took a month off. I definitely plan to go back. I went to some incredible, isolated beaches, and I realized how I’m such a worker. I love making music so much and creating it and playing it, so sometimes I forget how restorative and great it is to get away from it for a second. So I had a really great trip. I’m trying to find ways to be more intentional, taking breaths away from this to keep it really fresh.
Staff Writer Aimsel Ponti can be contacted at 791-6455 or at:
aponti@pressherald.com
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