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The first time I saw Katherine Quinn play was during UVM's Free To Be: GLBT Visibility
Week. After the first song, I turned to the woman I was with and said, "I'm
never missing another show she does." Two nights later, I saw Katherine play
at the Rhombus Gallery. It was my first date with the woman I've been seeing ever
since.
I got a chance to tell Katherine my date story when we sat down for an interview and a couple beers at The Other Place. "That's a pretty common thing, " she says, "women using my shows as first dates." And no wonder--Katherine Quinn is clever, talented, and articulate, and she writes and performs her own songs. She writes about loving men, about loving women. about telling off men (and women), about telling off her boss. And she's not shy about her sexuality.
Quinn identifies as bisexual, and says that one of the reasons she's so open about it is that she doesn't remember seeing positive images of queer people when she was growing up. She says she's out because, "being in the closet makes young girls who are drawn to women have no role models."
In "Give Your Name Away," she sings about a relationship with a childhood girl friend. In the song, the girls shave with their father's razors, play on the Little League team, and kiss in the backyard. She wrote the song after receiving an invitation to the friend's wedding, and the refrain asks, "Girl, why you gonna give your name away? Why you gonna let them give you away?"
We talked for a while about being young, queer, and Catholic--wanting
to fit in. "I wanted to be an altar boy," she says. She told
her priest, who said, "'if you want to be an altar boy, why don't
you write to the bishop.' So basically, he was saying, 'why don't you
just kiss off.' I was ten years old, and I went home and told my mother.
She rolled her eyes and said, 'he's such an asshole!'" Katherine
laughs. "So I wrote to the bishop, and I got this letter back that
said I should serve the way women were supposed to serve, in the back
with Sr. Doris, serving coffee." After that, she says, she gave up
her religious aspirations. "That was the end. The romance was
dead."
Quinn, who grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, went to Brown University, and graduated in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in Education. She taught high school for a short time before moving to Burlington in January of 1993. Why Burlington? "It was as close as I wanted to be to Providence, and as far as I could afford to go." She's held a variety of jobs since she got here (chicken farmer, sautŽ cook, dump truck driver, etc.). She says that singing has been a relatively new development--"I bought a guitar the day before I came to Burlington. I had never played one in my life...I didn't know anybody here, and I came up in January, so it was cold. I just played and played."
Five years later, she's on the verge of releasing her first CD, "Leaving Decatur", due out in July. Jeff Miller, who brought her to the Rhombus Gallery as part of the Burlington Coffeehouse series, says Quinn is "on the cutting edge of acoustic music." Miller has known Quinn since she showed up at his open mike night three years ago. "Her songs are like a conversation," he says. "That's what first attracted me to her music. It's like you're sitting down with her, and she's telling you a story." Quinn's got a lot of stories. She's a prolific writer, having copyrighted nearly 100 songs since she started playing. She's quick to point out, however, that she has a hard time remembering them all. Sometimes she forgets her own words on stage. Even so, the audience is almost always forgiving. Why? Because when she gets her songs right, she's a captivating performer. Her songs are charged with the intensity of someone who has something vital to say.
Perhaps this is because Quinn sees her music as an outlet for her desire to teach-- she often writes about conflict and struggle. Her songs deal with conflict in relationships, the tension between activism and complacency, and the disparity between rich and poor. A lot of her songs reflect her own experience in the workplace, and living in Burlington's North End. In "Kitchen Table", for example, she says, "Maybe you should try walking on the other side of the street. You'd be astounded at the people you might meet. Maybe you should try walking on the other side of town. You know, my neighborhood, the one you avoid when the sun goes down."
And although she readily admits that she's sporting an attitude, on stage Katherine Quinn is soft-spoken and charming. Her newly shaved head, tattoos, and genuine smile are almost as popular as her lyrics with the collegiate womyn crowd. Sometimes more so in other situations.
She used to play at a bar in Burlington every week, until one day she
decided that the steady gig was not exactly what she wanted to be doing.
"One night I was playing, and I realized nobody was listening. So I
started changing the lyrics of my songs. 'Free me, set me free, set me
free' became 'salami, salami, salami,' and in 'Rather Be', I started
saying 'I'd rather be homo where somebody was listening to me.' they
didn't even notice. So I stopped. Then some guy came up to me and offered
me fifty bucks to keep playing. I thought, 'you just want a girl on-stage
playing guitar, and that's totally not what I'm here for.' So I didn't do
it. I left."
I recently saw her perform for new student orientation at UVM. During one set, I watched a young woman who sat across the room with a group of guys. She was listening, nodding her head, and laughing at the appropriate moments, especially at the line in "Bar Pick Up Song," when Katherine says, "home is where I'm going alone." Most of the people there were hearing her play for the first time. The crowd was mixed, and the guys seemed to enjoy the show, but it was mostly the women who were getting it, and getting into it.
The first time I heard Katherine Quinn play, I realized what it must have been
like to be an Ani DiFranco fan before Spin Magazine called her "rock's
most unlikely superstar." It's exciting to see Quinn at this stage in her
career, when she still takes requests, and hangs out with the audience after
the show. I highly recommend the experience, especially while her shows are
still cheaper than a movie date.
