We recently connected with Katt Holiday and have shared our conversation below.

Katt , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

– I think my work, my music, my art (though I hesitate to think of it as “mine” necessarily) has probably been misunderstood more often than not. I feel this is generally because a lot of the art I make sort of side-steps conventions. If a creative person is concerned with making any kind of money from what they create – the “industry” says “figure out what box it fits into (genre, style, image, function, etc) then group it with other things in that box and sell it”…which is not necessarily a bad thing, I think as people naturally we have this tendency to want to categorize things –

But I am naturally restless and stubborn, and I love juxtaposition – qualities which make it hard for me to “sit still” artistically. I might write a folk sounding song about “real world” things like work, addiction, family, etc – then the next song that might come out is more experimental & esoteric, about sentient plant-life from other dimensions breaking through and enveloping earth or something…(I have never written a song about that, just an example…maybe I should write it though!?) anyways – the point is – with all the conventional wisdom saying “market it, brand it, find a sound or a style and stick with it” – it makes sense that a lot of my art has (I feel) been misunderstood, because I am not staying squarely in one box. I am taking bits and pieces of information, thoughts, styles, inspiration from all over the place and putting them all together. I have always absorbed and enjoyed music, film, art of different kinds – it’s mostly just about what speaks to me at the time – and this is sort of how I have approached creating as well – I do my best not to worry about limiting the expression. This makes a lot of what I do turn out maybe harder to pigeon-hole, and therefore harder to market, or to understand instantaneously.

It’s not that I am trying to self-aggrandize or say that what I do is so lofty or above anyone’s head or anything like that – it’s just that I haven’t necessarily been all that concerned with whether or not what I was creating would be understood or even cared about. Don’t get me wrong, of course I would love it if everything I did was well received and made me enough money to live on…that’s the dream, right? But what I mean is – I think that during the creative process, to be concerned about how any piece of art is going to be received is very detrimental, it potentially colors the entire experience – including the product. To me, you have to follow whatever feels right in the moment so that in the future – whether any given piece is well received or not – at least what you have done will be cool, by your own definition.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

– Right, so… I was born in Felixstowe, England. My dad was a pilot in the air force and I was born while he was stationed there. When I was young, my family moved back to the states to Arkansas before my dad retired from the military. Then we came back to Central Illinois, to my parents’ hometown – Eventually, my dad’s post-military job wound us up farther south in the state – where I graduated highschool (barely, – mostly by the grace of one forward thinking teacher), formed my first bands, got into trouble, all the things you do when ya live in the country surrounded by mostly wildlife and small towns.

I started playing music when I was really young – I begged my folks and (with the help of my sister) they got me a guitar when I was 7 years old. They paid for guitar lessons at a shop in town. This would have been the mid-late 90’s – but my teacher was kind of a throw-back 80’s metal-head shredder kinda guitar player, super knowledgeable, super patient and somehow able to teach me (as a wired-up 7 seven year old) the fundamentals. He taught me some theory but as a kid I was more interested in learning how to play ‘Iron Man’ or whatever…and I think I think he quickly picked up that I was going to navigate the way I played guitar more “by ear” or “by feel” – so at some point it just became this weekly thing of him saying ‘bring in a song you want to learn and we’ll figure it out together’. That was pretty invaluable because it helped train my ear to be able to pick things up and listen, which helped when I started to play music with other people. He was a working musician who gave lessons on the side and I think it was good to have a role model who made his living via music in a practical way.

My first band started in jr. high – it was a three piece mostly playing punk rock covers at first until we started adding our own stuff. It morphed a little and continued through highschool – at some point I left and started playing in a more “alt-country” type thing. From there it’s a bit dicey to follow my musical path. Since then I’ve been in tons of bands of varying styles – rockabilly, blues bluegrass/folk, garage rock, Cajun/creole music, neo-traditional Irish music,…it was all over the place for awhile. In my twenties I settled into a sorta punk-blues two-piece with a good friend. That became the main vehicle for awhile and I think my songwriting started to really open up and get better then. We were a pretty active band – played a lot locally and I got my first taste of touring…which, like any addiction – can be equal parts fun and grueling – but that band was really where I started feeling like music as an avenue for living (not just a pipe-dream kind of thing) – while difficult, was possible.

After that band dissolved – I started playing solo sort of consistently for the first time ever – this has helped my solo sound sort of solidify into what generally lately people have been calling “freak folk”. It’s enough of a catch-all term that I am not fighting it too much. Ha! Also, things have rekindled musically with Jonnie Nelson (my old friend with whom I first started playing music in jr. High) – he and I have been writing/recording/performing a lot with our project ‘Children of the Rat Temple’ – (me on electric guitar and vocals, and Jonnie layering various instruments live – digital percussion, synths, bass, trumpet, flute , etc). It’s some kind of post-punk psych-trance world-beat amalgamation…but it’s better heard/seen than described.

I think we’re pretty different from most things around – for a lot of the same reasons I mentioned in the previous question regarding my art being “misunderstood”. Jonnie and I both have very different styles – but that actually is benefit to the music we make together. We both listen to all kinds of music and bring those influences into our sound. People seem to respond to it because (a.) a lot of times our songs are easy to dance to (b.) we’re offering a counterpoint to other things and (c.) we put our heart into it.

I think I do the same thing ideologically with my solo stuff – but it’s more contemplative and not nearly as danceable as Rat Temple – which helps immensely. Ha!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

This might sound cheesy or redundant even – but the most rewarding part of being a “creative” is really just to create. Though sometimes it is a struggle – I genuinely am really just happy to still be making music and art. Life presents this near-constant influx of feelings, thoughts, emotions, that are always there that I need to express sometimes in order to even function. It’s like self-administered art-therapy. The beauty of it is that you can share it with others as well – it doesn’t have to be a selfish thing. Keep your ego in check and just keep making music because you love to do it and you have to do it. That’s the work, the play, and the reward.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I hesitate to label people as creatives or non-creatives – because I think all beings have creativity innately within them in some way…but I think something people might not understand or that might not be readily apparent about my own personal journey, is that – I used to be sort of a party person in the past, but for the last while I have been a bit of a homebody and I have mostly just been devoting myself to writing/creating/and self-healing. I have always been an introvert and as such – talking about myself, even doing this interview – can feel pretty unnatural or even nerve-wracking sometimes…so for me to share my art and my life at all – even though it is something I have done continually – it feels a little scary every time…

I think people who are not existing so much in the world of art or music may not understand that need to create something and to share it despite this one aspect of it being sort of anxiety-inducing in a way. It’s not even whether the creation will be liked or not – but more just this feeling of exposure and vulnerability that is something I think a lot of artists probably deal with. It’s part of what makes artists valuable (and dangerous) – the ability to tap into the unseen parts of things.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rat_temple_?igsh=eXJmcWJ6NjlvZXp1&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/88miracleboy/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@kattholiday38?si=Z8Rk_y1pAZ4ELrwW
• Other: https://youtube.com/@ratchildren?si=PU3Qd2DnU6JlDbV2https://open.spotify.com/artist/6a68NdReQJrZ9sAbAVeNU6?si=8rdFdUVLRoyZcAo4gTx3XQ

  https://open.spotify.com/artist/57KRx7PC7gKD8ebAUU1UgV?si=kTSLxlbCSjaVQBnGom03dA

Image Credits

Nina Wilson, Kiersten Owens, Andrew Beyke, Sylvia Ruiz, Katt Holiday, Geni Schropp, Kylen Disposable