INNER SELF: Princess Pine [interview included]
A journey into the world of singer/songwriters past and present.
They might lay dormant for a while, but TDM’s (ir)regular features are never forgotten. Our little foray into the world of folk and singer/songwriters might have had a long slumber, yes, after we remembered the sadly missed Blaze Foley and talked to the wonderful Michael J. Sheehy, but it’s now been forced awake by the tremendous, but also tremendously gentle, power of a brand new artist appearing out of New England, more specifically the state of Maine. If you are as avid a fan and follower of the great Steve Austin and his various endeavours, you will recall that AERM, Steve’s studio, is located precisely in that state, in the town of Orland, and it was precisely through yet another fine Steve recommendation (he’s always had the cream of several musical crops recording with him, but when it comes to new bands, the man is on a hell of a roll lately - remember Gauze Trail, just to mention the latest one?), that I discovered…
PRINCESS PINE
So Princess Pine, which according to Google’s results when I first looked her up, is also the name of a plant, is the artist name under which Kate McCann has undertaken her first “formal” recording project, has she defines it in the lovely interview she kindly gave us, a little bit further down this page. To understand the impact her uncluttered, poignant, timeless music had on me the first time I listened to it, here’s the picture: sprawled on my sofa, late at night, about to call it a day, when I picked up my phone to look half-heartedly at social media for a minute, which lead me to scroll past Steve’s post on Facebook about this artist’s debut EP that he had recorded earlier in the year. His description included stuff like “a really unique voice that works perfect in Appalachian style haunting songs” and “her music is truly authentic and real. Takes you another time and place,” and I know that Steve isn’t one for hyperbole even with music that he’s involved in.
Naturally curious, I clicked the Bandcamp link, that awkward little Facebook browser popped up with it, and I just hit play on the first song (‘Bone Dry’). I wish I had a CCTV system in my living room, as the look on my face must have been quite something. Absolutely mesmerised by the haunting, ancient feel of the song, the voice and the banjo, I just sat there in stunned silence as the six songs on the EP rolled by, from my phone’s shitty speaker resting on the arm of the sofa, unable to touch it and play the songs from somewhere nicer, lest the magic spell break and I find out that this was all a weird dream. My partner, who is generally much pickier than I am with music, appeared halfway through, drawn from her studio where she was working, three rooms away, asking me wide-eyed what was this surreal thing I was listening to.
This was just last week, since then I have listened to these just under 25 minutes about a million times, and I can tell you the magic hasn’t faded in the least yet. Steve wasn’t wrong when he said this music will take you to another time and place - inspired by traditional music and sea shanties, Kate sings tales of sorrow, loss and contemplation in an ethereal yet very grounded June Tabor-esque voice that feels is coming from someone decades older and world-wearier than she is. You will feel the salty winds lashing your face hundreds of years ago, just through the action of her voice, her razor-sharp banjo melodies and the occasional flourish of guitar and fiddle. The songs are sparse but not necessarily minimalist, not even on the heart-wrenching, aching beauty ‘The Ships Come In’, a completely a capella number that will not fail to give you goosebumps every time.
There is truly great songcraft at work here, in a Leonard Cohen (happy birthday, by the way, dear Leonard, wherever you are) sort of approach to the songs, which feel finely aged, carefully pored over, so that each solitary note is exactly what it should be, but crucially, never at the cost of spontaneity or natural flow. That this young lady has achieved something like this on her very first “serious” recording, before even attempting to make a full-length album, is nothing short of staggering. If I hadn’t actually talked to Kate for this following interview that I immediately requested upon the first couple of listens, I’d probably be thinking this is some kind of funny scam Steve and whatever vastly experienced musician is behind the project were playing on us. It’s not, though. Kate is the real deal, and she’s super nice, smart and humble on top of it, and it was a pleasure to have a chat about her music. Read on, after the jump. And listen to the EP while you do it, preferably.
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Let’s start by the very beginning, then - what are your origins as a musician? Have you been involved in any other project before Princess Pine?
Kate McCann: This is my first formal recording project, but I have been playing music for a while. I grew up singing choral music, and I studied classical voice pretty seriously as a teenager and through college, but I didn’t feel it was a great fit for me, because of the rigidness of it. I didn’t grow up with a folk music background like some people do, it was only when I was a student at Bennington College in Vermont that I discovered folk music, specifically in an Irish music class I took. Then I got really fascinated by Irish ballad singing and ended up going to Ireland for a semester and everything, to collect songs and do research. The past ten years have kind of been about learning as much about folk music as I can. I didn’t play the banjo until after college, when I joined a folk punk band. I started playing it, then got into sea shanties, which is a whole other thing, and here we are.
My introduction to sea shanties was that compilation on ANTI- a few years ago, ‘Rogue’s Gallery’, and it’s such a fantastic world to explore. There’s actually a song there, ‘Turkish Revelry’, sung by Loudon Wainwright III, that features a couple of verses similar to your ‘Low And Lonesome’ song.
Kate: Oh, totally. There’s a lot of version of that ballad, really an amazing amount of versions and they can be all quite different. That song was the one I wrote with just pieces of the words from those various versions.
I like how all your general influences are basically out in the open with your description on Bandcamp: “Irish/maritime/old-time/freak-folk”, yup, it’s all there. Is Princess Pine what happens when you join all that in one?
Kate: Yeah, pretty much. That’s why I chose an artist name, I didn’t want to just be under one niche, I wanted something that could hold all of those influences. And besides that, I love rock’n’roll too. I grew up listening to psych rock and punk. I never got super into metal but I love that stuff too, and those influence are also there in some way.
Given your choice of Steve for the recording, that makes sense - it’s a pick that shows a sort of dark underbelly to your inflluences already. Do you plan more activities under your own (or any other) name, or are you focusing on this Princess Pine identity for now?
Kate: That’s a good question… The Princess Pine project is still pretty rooted in folk music, but I want to write more original music for it. While I’m not opposed to incorporating more electronic instruments and more rock’n’roll influences, for this project at least, the core is always going to be a folk, traditional foundation.
I love the almost barebones sparseness of the songs, culminating in the remarkable ‘The Ships Come In’. Your voice has considerable weight even when standing on its own. Has your formal training helped in achieving this, you think?
Kate: I definitely think about it… I think it’s hard to totally remove myself from the training I’ve had. I mean, classical training and folk or trad music can be a little bit at odds, because you want to sound “authentic”, though that isn’t really my favourite word. But I try to channel it from… my soul [laughs], and not have it be too much “oh, I’m doing this technique”, but I’m sure that comes into it inevitably.
It’s a balance, isn’t it? You want it to be spontaneous and free, “authentic”, there we go, but a little bit of technique also never hurt anyone, right?
Kate: Exactly!
How does ‘Sea Songs’ begin to take form? When did you decide you were ready to do a thing, instead of isolated songs?
Kate: I didn’t necessarily feel ready! [laughs] But I really want to have more of a body of work and not just singles. It was actually Steve who encouraged me to do an EP and not just come in and record singles. Initially I thought I’d just come in and get a feel for what it was like, because I had never been in a proper recording studio before, but he was like, I would encourage you to actually have a theme… It doesn’t necessarily have to be a theme, but yeah, an EP, a collection of songs, and that seemed like a good next step for me, it made sense.
This is becoming more and more of an age thing, but a lot of us still give a lot of meaning to the item, to the album or the EP format. It means something for these songs to be together, right?
Kate: Oh, totally. I’m still of the age where albums were the primary thing, that’s how I grew up. I want to make an album, but I think I was just a little bit hesitant hearing all the things people say about the state of the industry and everything. I’m a relatively unknown musician, so I kept thinking, will anyone at all listen to an EP? But at some point you have to make what you want to make and let all the rest go, so I went for it.
Are any of the songs on the album100% originals, taking nothing from traditional music?
Yeah, ‘Bone Dry’ is completely original and ‘The Ships Come In’ as well.
There we go, those are my favourites! Will you focus more on those in the future, or will you keep the traditional/sea shanty inspiration as a part of your musical personality?
Kate: I love to hear that! And we’ll see… I became obsessed with sea shanties because I was working at a maritime museum actually singing the sea shanties on the staff, and I felt like I wanted to create something in response to that, but I think I’ll have to move on from that being the focus exclusively. I’ll always love sea shanties, and it’s something that’s pretty unique – plus I keep finding new ones and thinking that I should have done those too! [laughs] - but I don’t want to just do that forever.
Origins in folk are typically important – do you feel an artistic/musical connection with your own region?
Kate: I was born in Connecticut, I’ve only lived in Maine for a few years, but it’s still New England. That vibe, that sound… I do feel very much like a New Englander. The landscape, the seasons, the culture... I’ve travelled a fair bit, I’ve lived on the West Coast, I’ve lived in New Zealand, but I definitely feel like a New Englander, and for sure, that shapes me artistically in some way.
How did you actually end up picking Steve to record the EP? Are you a Today Is The Day fan at all?
Kate: I wasn’t familiar with Today Is The Day, in fact! I was at a show, a Celtic festival, and a local band played their set and they said they had a new album they had recorded at this studio in Orland, by Steve Austin, and it really stuck in my brain, I don’t know why. I looked him up many months later, and I was like… Well, it wasn’t what I was expecting at all! [laughs] I heard of him through a folk band, but his roster of clients is like, a little more extreme than what I thought! But I actually loved that, I thought that was great. I actually have an ex-boyfriend who listened to a lot of hardcore music, he’d heard of them, and he was like, “whoa, that’s crazy, that’s the guy from Today Is The Day!” I like the idea of recording with someone who isn’t actually a big folky, someone whose ears weren't saturated in folk music like mine often are. When I had a conversation with him and he told me about his approach, the way he mics acoustic instruments in the studio and stuff like that, I thought that sounded great, I was down for it immediately. We even talked about Neil Young and The Beatles and everything. I didn’t want it to be a straight up folk approach thing.
Ah, now that’s the kind of gold an interviewer always digs for. [laughs] Knowing what’s behind the obvious influences, what non-folk stuff informs what you do.
Kate: That makes sense, yeah. And The Beatles are my favourite band, so…
Have you been playing live regularly?
Kate: I play live a fair bit, yeah. Though I only play live solo since 2021, post-pandemic, before that I always played in bands. But ever since then I’ve been playing mostly solo, and I’m still kind of honing in my solo act, I’m really enjoying it.
What are your future plans? I suppose recording a full album is among them?
Kate: That’s a great question, I do want to record a full album, and I am just now feeling ready for it. I’m only now just starting to write songs for a new album. I’m not somebody who’s just always cranking out songs, maybe someday I will be and that would be something wonderful, but at this stage it feels like it takes a lot to break down the wall between me and getting to the truth of the song. When I do, it feels really satisfying, but it doesn’t come super easily. It seems to be my nature. But yeah, I would like to write more originals and record a full album and maybe do some demos, and see what happens.
In the emails we exchanged before this chat, you described yourself as a DIY artist. Have you had any contacts or proposals by any record labels or something like that since the EP came out?
Kate: Not really, no. I think it would be in my best interest to be sending more stuff to people… it’s not that I’m clueless in that aspect, but I don’t know, I have a bit of imposter syndrome. I’m like, I should send out more stuff to A&R if I can, but then I’m also like, baaah, who’s gonna listen to it, I’ll just be annoying. [laughs]
You could also look at it as letting your music speak by itself. As good as it is, I’m sure it’ll reach and touch many people even if you do absolutely nothing else apart from playing it!
Kate: I’m a big believer in trusting in the universe. I don’t mean being 100% passive about it, but it’s like sitting down and writing a song - even if it takes a while, you have to actually sit down and do it at some point. What I mean is that I don’t like to push too hard for any result, I like it when it feels that things are happening organically.
Cruel question time - what’s your favourite song on the EP?
Kate: I think ‘The Ships Come In’. It’s one that I wrote partially when I was on a walk in the middle of winter in Maine. I almost didn’t recorde it because we had already tracked all the vocals. Again, that inner critic was like, ugh, you just wrote it, it’s not worth it spending more hours in the studio, but then on the flipside I was like, no, you’re trying to push yourself, push your boundaries, so go in and just record it. And now a lot of people have said that it’s their favourite song, and I like it too, actually! I’m very happy with it.
Maybe that one’s more a blueprint that you can use for future material than others, right?
Kate: I will, because that kind of came from a more, like… being a vessel. I know this sounds so woo and cheesy, but letting the outside influences flow through me, instead of sitting down and trying to pull the ideas out like pulling teeth, which it sometimes can feel like.
You can find Princess Pine on Bandcamp, Facebook and Instagram.
She also happens to have a wonderful newsletter right here on Substack - go check it out and subscribe right now.
All photos by Phoebe Parker.
I’m so proud