Chrysalis, the title of the new two-CD release on Sunset Blvd. Records by Katy Moffatt, aptly describes Moffatt’s career, as well as the music appearing on the recording, characterized by transitions.
Chrysalis is a two-CD project pulling together three albums Moffatt recorded ten years apart with guitarist Andrew Hardin: 1988’s Walkin’ On The Moon, 1998’s Angel Town, and 2008’s Fewer Things. Despite the separation of decades when the three were recorded, these recordings consistently present the clean, stripped down acoustic performance featuring Moffatt’s vocals and their two guitars.
Part of what makes these three recording projects unique, says Moffatt, is they were made independently without heavy financial investment or oversight by major recording labels. While she has made some highly produced albums, she prefers the kind of experience she had with more of a live recording. Her first album, the self-titled Katy, was produced by Billy Sherrill at Columbia Records, whom she calls one of her favorite producers to work with.
“He was absolutely fearless,” she says, “but he knew where his boundaries were and what he liked. But he would try anything.” Describing that recording experience she said, “It’s a different art to be simply a vocalist. We made that record very live too—all the musicians in the same room together—including the drums and all four background vocalists.”
She found herself moving away from the major labels, not wanting to be signed for a specific period of time. Walkin’ on the Moon, the earliest tracks on the Chrysalis release, was recorded in Switzerland in two days in a little voice over studio.
Moffat says, “I would have a couple of days off between gigs, and I began occasionally jamming with these weekend warrior bands with some kind of tricked out garage. At one of these jams, one of the guys pulled out “Mister Banker” every time we played—because he was a banker–a Swiss banker. It was one of those Lynard Skynard songs I had never heard, and it ended up on the record.”
While the recordings that make up Chrysalis include tracks by other songwriters, including Cole Porter, John Hiatt, and David Olney—Moffatt is writer or co-writer on a substantial number of the songs on this collection.
“If there is an outside song that I’m attracted to, that someone else has done, I try to bring in my style and perform it so I can get my vocal teeth into it, but when I write the composition myself, I can be sure I can do it. The majority of the songs I’ve written have been worked up on the guitar as the melody is coming through.
Several of the songs on Chrysalis were written with her Tom Russell, her frequent songwriting partner over the years, including “Walkin’ the Moon,” the title track on the earliest recording, “Mother of Pearl” on Angel Town, and “Whistlin’ in the Dark,” on Fewer Things. She co-wrote others with other songwriters such Billy Cowsill and Wendy Waldman.
With the release of Chrysalis early in 2020 just before quarantine shut down live performances and touring, Moffatt had found herself working on a number of projects. She was contacted by a documentarian working on a project about the St. Francis Dam disaster, the second worst in California in 1928.
“It was definitely the most deadly manmade disaster, and it happened right above where I live. I had written a song about it with Wendy Waldman, my one and only disaster song, and I was asked to do an audiovisual at the site where the dam stood when it broke,” says Moffatt. The location, she says, posed no challenge to social distancing.
She has also been working in Studio City with producer Carla Olson on a tribute project, “Ladies Sing Lightfoot,” recording one of the first songs she learned on her guitar, “Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” She’s has also been asked to sing harmony on a record with Norwegian singer-songwriter Jonas Fjeld, who toured last year with Judy Collins.
Moffatt says she likes to learn new songs and to play new music, so she has had no shortage or opportunities to do that during the current pandemic. She looks forward, however, to being physically with friends again—and performing.
She explains, “Performing for me—and this is not unusual—is a big part of developing a new song. I learn so much about it when I start playing it for people. I learn in what key it really belongs, and I’m instructed in other ways too about the lyric and sometimes about the music.”
As she promotes this new release, she notes that one thing that facilitated all three of these records was “not having any money—not having interested money or influential money, like a record company. These really were records made in a way most free of outside influence. That’s why I call the collection Chrysalis. Every one of these records was made in a very protected environment, without a producer saying we have to do this or that for radio or the get it on the charts. There was none of that because there was no money.”
The Texas-born singer-songwriter was raised by parents who, while not musical themselves, were music listeners, exposing her to everything from Wagner to Gilbert and Sullivan. As a teenager, Moffatt was drawn to popular music, captivated first by the Beatles and their rich harmonies. She knew she had to learn to play the guitar, starting with a twenty-five dollar model from Montgomery Ward and teaching herself to play with a chord book before eventually buying her first Gibson B25 model.
Her brother Hugh, two years older, was also musical, but hey went different directions. While she was more interested in top-forty music, he considered himself more of a “jazz snob,” playing trumpet and performing in marching band or band labs. The albums from his collection he left behind when he went to college, though, were seminal in her music education, she says — Nancy Wilson and Ella Fitzgerald. Separately they discovered interests in other similar musical tastes — like the music of the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo — until by the late ‘60s they were playing the same kinds of music. Hugh eventually began to write country songs and moved to Nashville.
While Katy was a student at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM, she performed on campus, leading to her casting as a folk singer in Tom Laughlin’s cult classic film Billy Jack.
She’s made a life and living in music ever since, opening for and touring with such acts as Muddy Waters, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson, and Steve Martin. She says of all the people she toured with, Hoyt Axton is the one she most considers a mentor.
While Moffatt has been described by a number of labels from folk to country rock, she considers herself eclectic: “kind of country blues, folk, rock with a little bit of jazz—so Americana, which has persisted as a term for this kind of music—that’s good because it’s comprehensive.”
Now Katy Moffatt has the pleasure of revisiting these songs from across her career, offering them just at the time when people who love music have time to explore and discover new music.