KATH BLOOM - ARTIST IN RESIDENCE - 21, 22 & 23 August 2008


Kath Bloom

 

 

Kath is a folk, country, and avant-garde legend and has been making records since the late 70s.

This was the first time Kath had ever played in the UK.

 

The daughter of world-renowned oboist Robert Bloom, Kath was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, where she trained as a cellist. However, Kath met avant-garde guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors in 1976 and teamed up with him for a series of now highly sought-after recordings of traditional blues songs and Bloom's fragile, beautiful originals. Some records were released in editions of as few as fifty, most no more than 300 copies, until the duo released their swansong Moonlight in 1984.

 

After a period of child-rearing, family life and daily financial struggle, Kath began to return to the studio in the 1990s. These new songs, recorded in friends' lounge rooms or cut-rate studios, reveal a mother-of-three songwriter as accomplished and affecting as any of her more acclaimed colleagues such as Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch or Hazel Dickens.

 

In the mid-nineties US director Richard Linklater stumbled across her music and used the song Come Here in Before Sunrise, but despite an initial flurry of interest, little came of the exposure. Kath's album Finally, released on Chapter Music in 2006, is the first record she has put out since 1984, aside from her own self-released CD-Rs and cassettes.

 

Now Kath plays with her band Love At Work, including longtime collaborator Tom Hanford and husband Stan Bronski.