Kate Yeager has garnered the love and support of some of our favorite Hollywood and musical women. Julianne Moore, Carnie Wilson, Kristin Chenoweth, Jane Wiedlin (Gogo’s) and more have voiced their support for Kate’s music and message.
Yeager is making new waves as she is releasing an EP “Before The Lights Go Out”which is due to come out in June via ONErpm.
We get to help release the video for her new single EDIT, which is about giving everyone else a version of yourself that “they” will accept. I had the most outrageous, deep, and moving conversation with this little queer suckerpunch (I mean that as the greatest compliment). Here are only a few of the excerpts, she has so much to give.
Jeremy Hinks: Kate, thank you so much for your time, and I guess, welcome back from Morocco and Peru right? What were you doing there?
KATE: I was playin’ bass for Marielle Kraft.
JH: I do not know her I’ll have to look her up. So where are you, Nashville right?
KATE: Yes I am.
JH: Are you part of the “Queer Tribe” down there?
KATE: Yes I am.
JH: He is a friend of mine, I tease him about being the Chief of the tribe down there, he says he’s too old to be the Chief, he’ll just prefer being the grand marshal. But, you guys do have quite a growing tribe down there.
KATE: We have a beautiful community, it’s a blue dot in a very RED ocean.
JH: That’s a good way to put it. So, let’s talk about the music, I guess you are as unfiltered in real life as you are in your music?
KATE: Only one way to find out… LISTEN!!!!
JH: Do you know Ty Herndon?
KATE: Yes, I met Ty, he is super sweet, I met him at a queer festival in P-town that I played a couple of years ago, he just happened to be there sitting in on my set.
JH: Well, I notice you have no filters, you talk about your anxieties, and you let everyone know in your music. Last night I was at a gig in Salt Lake City, and this queer artist Rachael Jenkins sang this song about being a gay fat kid, Mormon, and I just fell in love with her. So, now, I am happy to see there is more of a voice for young queer people, not shaming themselves, gonna step on some toes.
KATE: In my songwriting, I never try to cast blame, just straight facts of my story, this is how this happened. I have a very “Storytelling” way to my songs.
JH: Then if I could jump into “Sweet Potatoes” then…
KATE: OH MY GOSH!!!! YES JUMP INTO SWEET POTATOES!!!! Let’s talk about this song a root vegetable, especially people who have no context of who I am…
JH: “I made you pull over in my Camry, take you dancing in the rain, and my friend said not to say it, technically I didn’t, ’cause I said I love sweet potatoes, but I liked you more.” That’s cute, talk about that line.
KATE: I wrote that song with my fiancé in a car, we were driving back from her brother’s house in Cincinnati, it was a 13-hour drive on the way back to New York, it was telling the story of the first couple of weeks of us dating, and you know you are falling in love with that person, and instead of saying “I love you” you say everything else “I have never like someone so much in my entire life before”. And my favorite vegetable is sweet potatoes, and I thought how stupid it would be to put it in the song. I feel everyone has that moment when they are so scared, and for me, that was the way that I had said it. It was a really cute way to say “I love you”. I even sold sweet potato-scented candles, they were a hit. I had these two sweet gay men in Brooklyn and they hand-crafted some candles, it smelled like Thanksgiving.
JH: So I guess this is your fiancé, ’cause you said in the song “I had a crush on Jessica Biel” she must have been something. So, congratulations to her, for outdoing Jessica Biel… You met the love of your life. I think anyone who can fall in love and want to spend the rest of their life with someone is fantastic. Next month, I’ll be 21 years married.
KATE: NICE what’s the secret?
JH: Stay out of her way, and stay quiet. So, let’s get back to you. Do you know who John Grant is?
KATE: No, I don’t.
JH: He is a gay singer, and he wrote the best “Fuck You” song ever, called “Queen of Denmark” he said, “It was this us and them shit that did me in.” And in your song “Edit” there was a lot of “Us and them” going on, “They don’t get me, they get the edit”. Then you said “That’s on us, not them”, it’s powerful, trying to hide who you are, every scared kid, who is afraid to come out, and there you are with all the bad wigs and makeup in the video, and I know that was probably a lot of fun. But the point was so powerful, tell me what inspired me to make that song, how messy was it?
KATE: This song is for anyone who’s ever had to change themselves to make anybody else happy to feel more comfortable. Pride is upon us, we talk about how free everything is, but no space for how hard the journey it was to get here. We celebrate what we have, which is still not enough, but we’re getting there, so for me, it felt important to tell this story of how people everywhere are “Shape-shifting” to make other people more comfortable with who they are. I had this realization that these people are never going to know who I am because I’ve made a version of myself that they can take in. It was something I had to put into a song, so I got with my friend Dana Rodgers, and I came in with the title “Edit” and the line “When they don’t get me, they get the edit”, and she was like “Let’s GO, WE RIDE AT DAWN”. It started as a slower folk song, played on the guitar, then when I got with my producer Jared Anderson, (look him up everyone). We thought we should represent the tension of the song, I wanted heavy guitars, and I wanted the feeling of being cool on the surface and getting the edit bubbling underneath. The idea of consistently editing, and changing my looks, I think for the video we did 6-7 changes of my looks that day, and I wanted to end up as Trixie Mattel. It was so fast, get changed, fifteen minutes next take. Everyone was on board with working our way up to drag, which is the peak level of femininity in my brain, to that CAMP level of femininity, and fulfilling my fantasy of being a drag queen for a day…
JK: Cause the opening line, “I spent all night on Google, trying to learn golf terminology”, you are a far better person than me because the golf channel is the cure for insomnia.
KATE: I like golf now, I can’t explain it, but when you hit the ball well, and want to do it again, then you’re drinking outside, and I get it. I didn’t get it at first cause I didn’t grow up around it. But, in every relationship I’ve been in, their dads liked golf. So I learned all the terms.
JH: So in your world, the point of this song where is the line between “Us and them”, cause you are taking responsibility for what’s wrong, and you shouldn’t be.
KATE: I think everyone can take what they can, everyone is on their journey, it’s a delicate line, cause you’re doing the changing to make THEM more comfortable. But you are putting them in the position that doesn’t deviate from what is normal, and you’re trying to fit into that, and that I was making all these edits for something else. I realized if you have somebody who isn’t willing to change, we have done the work to make them more comfortable, that’s on them, not on us. So you get to a point where you have to decide what makes you feel the most comfortable. Maybe that’s coming out, I don’t think you should till you’re ready, I’m not blaming anybody, but when you feel safe enough to do so.
The “Us versus them” I would say it’s you trying to navigate through a world that was not necessarily built for you.
JH: The lines:
And your mom knows I’m not religious
But I ask how bible study is
She could talk for hours about her church
Isn’t it crazy after all that
they can sit there and defend
Calling me just your friend
Those hurt, and I know you meant it too(to).
KATE: How did it hurt you, I’m curious.
JH: That you are there going through whatever, to get the person’s approval, and they still toss you out, still ashamed, not willing to accept who you are.
KATE: You are doing the work to get to where that person is, only for them to not meet you there, that’s heartbreaking, that’s sad. “That’s on us not on them.” I’ve done the work, and you aren’t ready to do the real work.
JH: So here is my final question, what would you say to the young queer kid, who is in the closet, afraid, and giving the “Edit”?
KATE: We’re here for you, whenever you’re ready.
JH: Thank you, Kate, all the best with this tour, and all the love…
Seek out Kate Yeager on her website instagram tiktok youtube
The extended Dance remix with the banter, tangents and more gutwrenching stories, can be heard here.
