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Katy Tessman
886 Plays10 months ago
Minnesota musician, Katy Tessman is an optimistic and approachable singer-songwriter with a voice full of the wisdom she’s gained through cancer survival, heartbreak, and motherhood. Her powerful vocals and rhythmic approach to guitar (or mandolin) express a straight-from-the-heart songwriting style that moves passionately over diverse emotional and musical terrain.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guests
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Poetry on Solitude
00:00:32
Speaker
Sitting under an apple tree What a dreary thing to be To be somebody I find joy watching the bumblebees
00:00:57
Speaker
I started to spoon I said no, nobody Nobody, nobody knows me I am alone This is what I
00:01:35
Speaker
You walked in the room and I, I started to swoon I said no, nobody Nobody, nobody knows me Nobody, nobody knows me
00:02:10
Speaker
is a feathered thing purchased in the soul
00:02:32
Speaker
Then we make quite the pair We can travel to nowhere Let's go in June And then you, you walked in the room And I, I started to snooze I said no, nobody Nobody, nobody, no
00:03:01
Speaker
Nobody, nobody knows me. Nobody, nobody knows me.
Meet Katie Tessman: Artist and Musician?
00:03:21
Speaker
This is Ken Volante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast, and I am pleased to have Katie Tessman on.
00:03:29
Speaker
the show to talk about art and music and books, I reckon. I'm pleased to be here. Thank you so much. Yes. And we're reaching you from Minneapolis, I think. Yep. From Minneapolis, Minnesota. My cheeks might be a little rosy. I was just on a hike. It's 36 degrees here.
00:03:54
Speaker
Okay. Okay. It's, uh, in the Pacific Northwest, I can report, uh, Pacific Northwest to the U S it is, uh, cloudy, uh, damp, drizzly gray. And, uh, I think in the high forties. Uh, so, you know, uh, but, uh, love, love the state of Minnesota and I'll probably chat a little bit about that, but I wanted to just jump right into it and talk about, um,
Katie's Musical Journey and New Album
00:04:23
Speaker
Talk about your music and just reading about, you know, that you've had maybe a little bit different lives and, you know, done, you know, perform music when you were younger. And then the incarnation of you're doing new music now with some folks from the past and
00:04:46
Speaker
There's a whole lot in there. So I just wanted to jump in on that. And if you could just tell the listeners about your new album and the things that I mentioned. Great. Yes, I just released my second album of my musical career. It's called Fly. And it has nine songs on it.
00:05:15
Speaker
Some of the arrangements have a full band sound and some are a little more stripped down. My co-worker, who's 28 years old, she said to me when she first started working there about a couple years ago, she asked me a little bit about who I am.
00:05:32
Speaker
It's a long story. And she said, wow, you're like a cat. You've lived many lives. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So high school and college, I sang in choirs and performed in musicals. I love musical theater. And I got a degree in speech communication, which combines my love for performing and my love for writing.
00:06:00
Speaker
And I worked in a variety of nonprofit organizations, including the Children's Theater Company and Washburn Child Guidance Center. And then I was a performing singer-songwriter for about a decade. And then in 2003, after I released my first album, I became a mom.
00:06:24
Speaker
And then three years later, my second son was born. And all of my performing drive slowed way down. And I was focused on raising my sons. During that time, I did teach early childhood music. And I sang at our church.
00:06:51
Speaker
But being a singer-songwriter was not on the menu at all, as far as my energy and time goes and even inspiration. I did write like little ditties around the house about brushing your teeth and taking shoes off at the door and that kind of thing. You know, to get through our daily life, I'm always singing. And music always filled my house.
00:07:17
Speaker
and my sons have always liked playing music and singing music. Yeah. Yeah. I really love that. But one of the things I was wondering through that is, of course, having these responsibilities, but keeping that component alive with the music
00:07:45
Speaker
I was really interested in the relationships in your band too. And I believe one of your sons is in the band and there's some folks who played music with you back way back when. So tell us about that because I'm just like,
00:08:01
Speaker
I read about that. I'm like, what's that like? Just that experience. That experience, yeah. Yes. Well, in the late 90s, I was in a band called Joe's Elevator. We released an album in 97. Then quickly after that was done, we broke up. A lot of bands do that. Through the studio experience, you realize, I've got other goals and other ideas.
00:08:29
Speaker
When that band dissolved, I knew I wanted to continue with a solo career, and the bass player, Tom Lear, who I have known for so long, for so many years, he played with me, and after my 20-year break of performing, he is right there as my sideman again, and it's wonderful. Tom is so dependable, and it's neat to know, have a friend,
00:08:59
Speaker
from so long ago before like all of these things that I've done like became a mother and all those other things and he has as a dad of three now and two are in college so sometimes I feel really old but when I'm playing music with Tom I'm reminded of
00:09:21
Speaker
how fun I am. Even when I was young, you know, I feel much, much more young. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's something. I mean, this is kind of me from the outside, you know, looking in. But recently I thought about like the situations of like, what would it be like to like work intensely or to collaborate artistically with like
00:09:47
Speaker
like my brother or like members of my family or like my partner Jenny or like how like, like to inhabit that space. And so from the outside, I just wanted to point out it's, it's really a thrilling thing to see cause it's such a deep, it's not easy. It's, it's sometimes it'd probably be super easy and sometimes a lot more difficult than other type of arrangements because of the proximity and the relationships.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yep. And then my
Rediscovering Music During COVID-19
00:10:19
Speaker
oldest son, he learned how to play guitar during the pandemic. And we all know where we were March of 2020. And what was happening in my house is my oldest son, he was a junior in high school. My younger son was eighth grade. And they both turned to music.
00:10:41
Speaker
And I went back to music and went right back to where I was before they were born. It was amazing. And I was starting to play my own, my old songs that I wrote in the late nineties, those covers by the Indigo Girls and Ani DeFranco that I love to play. And then I started songwriting again.
00:11:08
Speaker
It was very odd, but my older son, Louis, he was in band, and he was a percussionist, and distance learning percussion was zero fun. And he wanted to learn how to play my guitar. So I taught him the few chords that I know, and then I said, take it from here, and he cruised. Yes.
00:11:37
Speaker
I was so inspired by how he was focusing on learning how to play whenever we had to have serious talks about school.
00:11:51
Speaker
or high school graduation, or is he going to college? He would pick up my guitar and start playing some of my songs from a long time ago. It was really a great way to distract me from talking about heavy, serious things, you know, things that a 17 year old doesn't really want to talk about. So it was after he graduated high school that I invited him
00:12:17
Speaker
to play a gig with me. Do you want to play? Yes. And that's really what got me back on the stage was being able to perform with my son and show the world what a talent my son has. Hell yeah. Yeah, that's that's good to celebrate. And that's what's fun about it's fun about art and performance. And, you know, I get really excited about music. It's like there aren't too many spaces where like seriously, it's like
00:12:47
Speaker
Yeah, like do it. Do your thing. And that's pretty fun. I get to hit you with a couple of conceptual questions to make sure like you take care of like the whole conceptual edge of the show. So yeah, Katie, what about art? What is art? Art seems to enchant you and like, you know, talking about your time in creating art, but what is it? What do you think it is?
00:13:17
Speaker
art is something that makes you feel. So whether it be a song or a painting or a poem or a book, it makes the reader, the listener, the viewer feel something. And really good art reminds you of an emotion that you haven't thought about in a long time. So
00:13:48
Speaker
Sometimes, you know, a really good movie will make you cry like a baby. And obviously, you needed that good cry. A great book will make you laugh out loud. And that is art and music.
00:14:09
Speaker
is amazing in that you have the lyrics and you have the instruments and you have layers of instruments or the spaces between the notes that are played that stirs something inside of you. And one of my goals with my music is to
00:14:33
Speaker
touch on some pretty deep, tough things, but to let everybody know that it's okay to have these feelings and
Art, Emotion, and Album Tour?
00:14:43
Speaker
that we're all feeling these feelings and that we're in this together. Yeah. I, um, I was listening to, um, uh, to your second album. I don't know what to call it. And the thing is, you know, um,
00:15:02
Speaker
I just wanted to give you my reaction, like the mind space I was in at the time too. So like my musical tastes, I think, I think in general are extreme, but just like extreme in the sense of I go really deep into areas that I really like, and I like a lot of different styles of music. And, you know, there's that joke around it, but that's where my brain goes. So I'm really moved, like when I see
00:15:32
Speaker
metal, like I'm a big metal head and I like live like doom metal. It evokes a lot of things for me. And so I go through these different phases. But what I was really digging about just listening to your new album is definitely it wasn't something that I'd be like, oh, that's going to be like directly appealing to me. It was like softer in the ballads. And I really enjoyed it in particular.
00:15:59
Speaker
for like the space I was in because I just started like away from like my intense like day to day labor work that I do for a job into more of like time around end of the year and holidays and creating art and doing more of that.
00:16:19
Speaker
And it was just really appealing to rate when I listened to it as well. So it's just like that's one of the things with music that's like that. And it was nice to listen to, but yes, some more about that second one. And are you playing that...
00:16:44
Speaker
live out there in the Midwest or how's that how's that living right now I released fly in middle of October October is a pretty heavy month for me and we can talk about that in a minute but um
00:16:59
Speaker
It was wonderful releasing this album. And since then, I've been touring Minnesota 13 stops, about 1,300 miles on the car, variety of small towns. Started out at the Astor Cafe in Minneapolis and ending at the Turf Club in St. Paul.
00:17:22
Speaker
And it's been a wonderful, wonderful tour. Some shows where I've been with me and my whole band. Some have been duo shows with just me and my son, and some have been solo shows. Love it. Love it. Hey, I wanted to ask a few for a few stops. I'm only not trying to show any deep Minnesota knowledge, but I did live about 12 years in the Midwest and Wisconsin. But any stops in, say, the midgy?
00:17:50
Speaker
Nope, Grand Rapids. How about Stillwater? No. How far west east did I go? I think St. Paul is as east as I went. All right, that was my stab, but I'm over here in the woods of Oregon. I'm here in the woods of Oregon. Okay, last summer I climbed Mount Rainier and I did an open stage at the Otter in Seattle.
00:18:18
Speaker
Oh gosh. You're in Oregon in Portland area. Okay. When before I became a mom, I climbed Mount St. Helens. Oregon's gorgeous. Incredible. I'm fascinated by Mount St. Helens and the explosion of volcanoes. The show has dropped in a couple of times into volcanoes, which has actually been some
00:18:45
Speaker
some wonderful territory. So you've been getting around in Minnesota with the album. I wanted to ask you the piece there, and I think you answered with your response to what is art and its evoking of feelings, but I wanted to formally ask you, do you think that's the role of art, kind of to evoke those feelings in folks? Because that
Writing a Children's Book on Breast Cancer
00:19:10
Speaker
was my follow-up question. What is the role of art? I think the role of art
00:19:15
Speaker
is it allows people, human beings, to experience and express themselves. And it could be through cooking. And, you know, you put love in your cooking and you're able to serve it to your family and the people you love. And that is artistic. And that, so art is
00:19:41
Speaker
is an action for human beings to be able to express themselves. Yeah, that sounds really healthy. Tell us about children's books. I will tell you about children's books. So during my 20 year pause from the stage, I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 39. So Sweet Lou, my now guitar player,
00:20:08
Speaker
He was six and Mighty Max, my younger son, he was three. And I tried really hard to find a book that I could read to the kids to explain to them what was going to happen to me. I never found the book. There's a lot of books out there about saying goodbye to your grandparents and like long narratives and dark, drippy watercolors. That was not the message I wanted to send.
00:20:36
Speaker
And so I found my own words to explain to them what was going to happen to me with this scary thing called cancer. And because my boys stayed positive and optimistic and understood, they seemed to understand what was happening, I realized that I did write the book that I was looking for.
00:21:02
Speaker
So I got together my journal entries and partnered with a fantastic Minneapolis-based illustrator named Jessica Bailey. And I self-published my book for children about breast cancer. It's called Our Mama is a Beautiful Garden. And I published that in 2013. And then in 2018, the second edition came out.
00:21:27
Speaker
Wonderful. That is fantastic to hear. So, creating the children's book author is another life of this cat.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, no good good on you and I think that's the thing because I talk you know by talking to artists you know I've done almost 250 shows and like the relationship that that any one human being has with their creativity is just so mixed and talking to you and talking to guests where
00:21:57
Speaker
you know, sometimes it's that they started doing something at a particular time that seems completely unrelated to everything else or like, you know, like somebody wasn't on stage for like 20 years, had some fright about it, but there was a situation where they had to step in. The drummer was sick on a traveling band and their buddies are like, get in there or something. You get in there and then you're like, holy shit, I haven't felt like that. And what?
00:22:25
Speaker
20 years. Yeah. Yeah. And my drummer
Collaborations in Music and Illustration?
00:22:31
Speaker
in my band is a fellow I went to high school with. He's younger than me. He's friends with my little brother. So I've always known Kelly for so many years. Yep. And it's so great. Kelly Lima. He's amazing.
00:22:44
Speaker
Awesome. Awesome. Such that's that's some some great stuff, some great stuff to hear. I have to ask you the big question related to the show, which is, yeah, tied to creativity or the nature of the cosmos. Take it as you will. But why is there something rather than nothing, Katie Tessman? Because we're human beings. And we will always have something
00:23:13
Speaker
And hopefully it isn't something to hold in our hands necessarily, but it's something that we can share. Hopefully it's, it's an emotion like joy or kindness because nothing pretty barren. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the power of collaboration. And again, I've asked you a couple of times about not, you know, I'm not trying to,
00:23:42
Speaker
But the power of the collaboration and re-killing those relationships through raw art, one of the things with the podcast I find is there's nothing to prevent sheared energy around creativity and collaboration, particularly nowadays.
00:23:59
Speaker
just like how what we create your music or the podcast can be anywhere or like can show up on its own anywhere. So like the power of collaboration and doing that and your experience of it.
00:24:14
Speaker
I found it to be incredibly powerful. Is that a basic way you work with your creativity and move forth, is to think about collaboration and how you do that with a band or what have you? I love collaborating. But I identify as a solo singer-songwriter. The majority of my songs I write by myself.
00:24:43
Speaker
I joined a songwriting challenge. It's a Facebook group and everyone is invited to participate. We get a prompt word and then a limited amount of time, like two weeks. We are to write a song based on that prompt, do a little home video and share it with the interwebs and then listen to the other folks that are participating. And through that challenge group, I've met many, many wonderful human beings.
00:25:12
Speaker
And Nikki Lemire is an indie folk artist just starting to make her way. And she plays harp and has a gorgeous voice and a fantastic ear for harmonies. So when I wrote my song, Hero Now Crowned, it was a decade after my cancer diagnosis. I really wanted to celebrate, but I also wanted to remind everyone that
00:25:42
Speaker
you know, life is hard. And even though you've accomplished something hard, you are a hero. So it's a tribute to the everyday hero. And the recording features Nikki Lemire. And I have an accompanying lyric picture book with illustrations by B.B. Keith, a St. Paul based illustrator. And so Hero Now Crowned
00:26:06
Speaker
The end product, the end piece of art is this song where I collaborated with Nikki Lemire and then this picture book where I collaborated with Bebe Keith and that is, you know, part of my legacy is that final piece of artwork. So the collaboration is important to me.
00:26:29
Speaker
the album that I released in October, it has one co-write with my producer, Michael Koppelman, and then a song that is a cover by Minnesota songwriter, Tim Cheesebro. And so the seven other songs I wrote and the music contribution was a collaboration of my band members.
00:26:58
Speaker
And Michael Koppelman did a, I'm just so proud of the final product that it is of the album, Fly. Yeah. Yeah. Great work,
Outreach and Optimism through Music
00:27:08
Speaker
Katie. And congratulations on that work. Can you tell them?
00:27:14
Speaker
Can you tell the listeners where to find you, where to find the music, all that type of stuff, the book, all that? Yeah. Well, my website, katytestman.com, has all the information you want, maybe more so. I spell my name with a Y, K-A-T-Y, T-E-S-S-M-A-N. I spelled Katie with a Y before Katy Perry did.
00:27:43
Speaker
You uh, I one thing I learned a long time ago and it's not a katie thing or anything. It's just you gotta make sure You gotta make sure you got the vowels and all that stuff straight. So I appreciate that
00:27:58
Speaker
But at my website, you can learn about my two books and all my music, the singles that I've released before my album. And then you could find out a little bit more about the Breast Cancer Superhero Portrait Project and the artist who created six different paintings. And there is a seven and a half foot tall painting of me as Wonder Woman.
00:28:24
Speaker
So there's lots of stuff. I have a whole mission to do some outreach where I do speaking events, whether it be at churches or like the Young Survival Coalition, helping people know they're not alone through their grief and their challenges that they have in life through my songs and my books. And my parents tell me that optimism is my superpower. And I'm happy to share that with people.
00:28:54
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you for speaking to that directly. I mean, I just had a, um, uh, just recently, uh, interviewing, um, uh, a playwright who, uh, did this play, uh, till death. And that was the, their first, uh, off Broadway production that they had written in their age 69. And to talk about, um,
00:29:22
Speaker
death and loss and grief and during the interview I was just like talking about it I was like wow this is like a territory to like
00:29:33
Speaker
for me to get into, cause I'm not comfortable. Like this, you know, we all should admit our faults. Like me, I'll admit mine, like in areas. And this is one where like, I will tough. I'm happy to listen to it, open to it, but don't show myself to, you know? And yeah. Yes. Talking about grief is really, really hard. Personally, I'm really comfortable in denial.
Grief, Resilience, and Life's Renewal
00:30:02
Speaker
Denial is a very comfortable place to be in. But we have these feelings that we need to address, especially when we are experiencing great, deep loss. And I have a song called Tulips and Daffodils. It's the last song on my album.
00:30:23
Speaker
And the recording is stripped down. It's just me and my son playing acoustic guitar. And I'm singing. And it is about the fact that you could cut the flowers, but they will still bloom. You can't stop spring from coming. They will come back. And that is a lot like grief. Time moves on. And we miss people.
00:30:53
Speaker
with their absence. But we are all experiencing the same spring. Yeah, it's hard. It's really, really hard to talk about.
00:31:05
Speaker
Well, you know, you made it easy as far as the transition into the end song by introducing the song. I didn't even have to ask you which one it is to lead us out. So I really appreciate that. It's been really nice to talk to you, Katie, and to hear about your creativity. And everybody, check out
00:31:27
Speaker
You know, support Katie directly, check out the music. My music is available everywhere. You stream your music.
Where to Find Katie's Work?
00:31:39
Speaker
I'm on social media, so I'm happy to have followers on whatever social media you like, whether it be YouTube or Instagram. Great, great. Well, find the music and really appreciate your time and the music as well, Katie.
00:31:55
Speaker
Thank you Ken, I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you. We are all connected
00:32:23
Speaker
by a thread Pull it, we are tighter together Stardust is what we're all made of
00:32:48
Speaker
We are destined to fly and soar to the sky But if I could go back I would hold you If I could go back I would tell you
00:33:16
Speaker
I love you Two lips and daffodils will come next spring But I will cut them all, cause you won't be here to sing
00:33:46
Speaker
All of this anger is really grief And grief is an awful thief If I could go back, I would hold you
00:34:15
Speaker
If I could go back I would tell you I love you Two lips and daffodils will come next night
00:34:46
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.
00:35:11
Speaker
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00:35:34
Speaker
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