Katie McTigue Talks Vulnerability, Folk Festivals, and Paul Simon’s "Nonsense Generator"
Who’s the last Pennsylvania-based independent female folk artist you listened to? If you can’t think of one, editor Caitlin Andrews has some mild propaganda (and an interview) ready for you. Katie McTigue of the musical project "Pacing" is a small-time female folk-rock artist who officially founded the project in 2020. Since then, she has released a selection of tracks, including "Goodbye, Uncle Bucky," (2021) "Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me?" (2021) and "I’m Getting Kicked Out of The World," (2019) and is currently working on her forthcoming EP, intended to be released sometime in 2022. She has also collaborated on various tracks with a selection of fellow musicians and producers, including Julia Read and Daniel Feinberg. Earlier in November, Caitlin was fortunate enough to be able to conduct a remote interview with McTigue, and ask her a few questions about her inspirations, her upcoming projects and inarguably most importantly, her cats.
Sitting in a baggy grey sweatshirt and sporting a well-chopped fringe, McTigue’s first impression seems warm, upbeat and youthful, if not a little nervous. We initially bond over our awful shared sleeping schedules: she’s trapped on West Coast time for work despite living on the East Coast, and I’m trapped on Australian time despite living in Scotland, merely as an unforeseen consequence of my chronic caffeine addiction. As I catch a glimpse around her apartment, I notice that her counterspace is littered with a curation of seemingly quite random objects—a red coat army man figurine, an oversized hourglass, something that looks like a hand drill with two large paddles shoved into it (or the world’s worst blender). I debate asking, but it seems more fun to live in the reality where she’s a philosophical weapons-wielding aficionado. And so, in keeping spirits, I ask:
Hi there, Katie! How are you doing? How’s life?
“Good and bad, like everyone, I think!” McTigue announces chirpily. “I’ve had a lot of free time, so I’m putting some more work into my music and having fun. We’re also moving across the country soon, probably in March, so I’m in kind of a chaotic period.”
Caitlin Andrews: Earlier this year, you released a single called, "Goodbye Uncle Bucky," with fellow creative and violinist Julia Read, heavily leaning into your theatrically folk roots. What was the creative process like in producing this track? Did you and Read enter into the track with any specific hopes for the single itself?
Katie McTigue: “That song was so fun. We were actually a part of this songwriting workshop by Diane Cluck, an amazing artist that I’ve loved all my life, and that’s where I met Julia. During a word association game, I said ‘lazy’ and Julia said ‘breezy,’ and we ended up needing to write a song involving the words ‘uncle, lazy, breezy, Subaru’ in the key of A Minor. Then I ran into this obituary from a guy named Uncle Bunky (Randall Jacobs) in Arizona, and he sounded like an amazing human being—a real ‘goombah,’ as he would say. From the list of words, we already had "uncle" so I thought, "This is what we’re writing about." I messed around with that idea, mostly coming up with the rough stuff, and we sent versions back and forth. Her version sounded completely different than how I played it and I thought it was much cooler. So, she wrote the full bridge and played the violins, and I produced it.”
CA: Throughout the body of your work, you’ve utilised several unorthodox methods, including using an upside-down futon as a vocal booth. Based on this, I can assume you’ve always had some kind of imaginative temperament, but how did you first get started writing music?
She pauses for a moment.
KM: “I’ve always been an ‘art-room’ kid, I’ve had lots of creative hobbies. I’ve liked playing music for a long time, and I’ve been in a couple of bands, but I’m not particularly great at any instruments. One day, I heard a song that wasn’t that great, and I just thought, ‘I bet I could do that. I like writing and I like singing, so I could probably do that.’ I really enjoy being given an assignment and then trying to work within the constraints of a prompt, so after that I made a few of my friends do a weekly song-writing club—we didn’t last long, but we came up with a new prompt every week. I wish I’d done it sooner, now I’m old,” she jokes, but quickly adds, “I shouldn’t say that, I don’t think I’m actually old. I just love angsty teen music, so I just feel like I could have had fun with it if I’d done it earlier.”
I consider reminding her that there are many adult musicians who profit from writing angsty teen music—after all, Morrissey’s a multimillionaire.
“Unfortunately, I was too busy writing awful poetry,” she explains. “The problem is, you have to go through a phase of being really bad at everything, and that’s so painful. Ira Glass had this quote, where he said: ‘All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.’”
CA: It seems from your lyrical and thematic production quality, you have a wealth of musical inspirations. Your 2021 track "Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me?" reminds me quite a lot of Joni Mitchell’s "California" in terms of storytelling ability. Who would you consider your main creative influences?
KM: “Thank you very much! I grew up with a lot of folk and bluegrass; I’m from Florida, and as a kid I would go to the Stephen Foster Folk Festival every year, and then I had a big Midwest emo and math rock phase in high school. I also really like musical theatre: occasionally, I’ll write a song and I’ll be like, ‘That is just too musical theatre, that’s obnoxious.’ I also like all the go-to singer-songwriters of our generation—Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift, Courtney Barnett. In terms of production, I’m mostly influenced by the more recent stuff. Modern Baseball is also huge for me, because I like blunt songwriting—people who sound like they think of songs, write them down, and then don’t edit them at all. I feel like the guys in Modern Baseball have balls of steel, they just go for it.”
CA: One unique element of your career is your extensive variety of album covers, ranging from cookies, to cats, to goats. How do you decide which images are album-cover worthy?
KM: “I have to go with my gut, I can’t overthink it too much or it’ll get bad. For the first couple of songs, "Snow," (2020) "I’m Getting Kicked Out of the World," (2019) and "Taste," (2020) the images kind of went together: at the time, I was thinking about doing an EP, so I felt like those were the same group of aesthetics and personality. They’re all just fun photos that I took, and a few of them are taken from a college scanner bed, like the "Taste" photo of the cookies.”
I can’t imagine that the manufacturer ever could have imagined a creatively impassioned McTigue cramming a full batch of cookies into her local college scanner for an album cover, but presumably it’s not the worst thing someone’s ever printed using one of those machines.
CA: As part of your Spotify biography, you stated, ‘I love to connect with other invisible Internet musicians and collaborate remotely.’ Who’s next on the list for potential collaborators? If you could choose anyone, who would you work with?
KM: “There’s some amazing people out there. I’ve met lots of people on a Subreddit called ‘r/BedroomBands’ and I’m currently working on a project with a friend of mine called Daniel Feinberg, which is going to be exciting. He’s a great, positive person, so you can send him anything and not be nervous about it. If I could choose anyone in the world? Paul Simon. I don’t need to actually write with him, I’d just like to sit behind him and watch. He has such an incredible ‘nonsense generator,’ where he can generate imagery and you’re like, ‘What the hell does that mean?’ but then you think about it, and you’re like, ‘Actually, I can place that in my own life.’ I should be clear that it’s iconic, ground-breaking nonsense.”
You’ve heard it here first, folks—a remastered edition of "You Can Call Me Al" featuring Katie McTigue, coming soon to all streaming platforms near you.
CA: In the past, you’ve stated that, ‘Pacing is a project where I get to try on a lot of different characters and see what they have to say. Most of them are profane, self-obsessed, shameless, unreliable narrators… I guess a little bit of the ‘real me’ always manages to slip in.’ What things, events or people usually inspire you to create music, and how much of your work is auto-biographical?
KM: “Every song is different. Obviously, the "Uncle Bucky" one was a specific thing I’d seen on the Internet about a real person. A couple of them, like "Snow" and "Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me?" were both a character that sometimes comes out of me when I’m trying not to be too vulnerable in songwriting. It’s a goofy character, but it has parts of the ‘real’ me. "I’m Getting Kicked Out of the World" is super fun,” she says, hoisting up a large painted canvas with a green background and handwritten block letters that simply state, "I’m Getting Kicked Out of the World." “My friend bought this for my husband from a studio in Tallahassee, where we’re from, called Pyramid; they work with intellectually disabled adults. One of their students made that painting which was being sold from the studio in a coffee shop, and I looked at it and thought, ‘That is metal.’ Mostly, I feel like I write a lot of songs in the middle of the day when I’m supposed to be working. I’ll get an idea and I’ll think I have to do it immediately. "June," my top song on Spotify and the ones that all my friends like the most, is pretty much entirely about me, so it’s kind of funny that that’s the one people like the most. I was trying to get away with not being vulnerable.”
CA: How has your sound developed since the beginning of your career?
KM: “Originally, I had no idea what I wanted to sound like. When I was writing, I tried a lot of things that sounded really bad, and then I slowly figured it out, which made me listen to and appreciate the production side of music differently. Within my internet collaborations on Reddit, I met this guy named Peter Coles, who’s a mixer, producer and musician within several bands that I love (one called Ramoray, and one called Longpond) and he really helped me figure out what the sound was for those first couple tracks. It’s amazing what a difference mixing makes, just based on my first demos. "June" and "Tinfoil Hat Song" were collaborations with my friend, Logan Castro, who’s an incredible pianist and composer. So, I guess who I’m collaborating with helps define the sound.”
CA: In potentially the most important question of this interview, both the artwork for your 2020 single, ‘Snow’ and your Instagram feed contain photos of one of the most expressive cats I’ve ever seen. How can we at Periphery bribe you into opening a dedicated Instagram account for them?
KM: “Oh, I would be happy to post my cats more,” she declares after a moment of laughter. Something about her tone makes me feel like this is the understatement of the year. “That one seems to be hiding right now, but I think I can grab the other one...” she calls out as she wanders across the room, suddenly materializing with a big, cuddly ginger cat named Mort nestled in her arms. “He’s the good one, the other one’s an asshole.” Unfortunately, according to McTigue, “the other one also gets really offended when we pay too much attention to Mort,” and in some kind of predictive feline summoning, her words are drowned out by the white cat’s discombobulating meows. It’s comforting to know that house-cat conflict never changes.
CA: What’s on the cards for 2022 and beyond? Can you tell us about any upcoming projects or releases?
KM: “Yeah! So, as I’ve mentioned, I’m doing the project with Daniel. We haven’t decided when we’re going to announce it, but no one gives a shit,” she says, with a self-deprecating laugh. “Do you know Phoebe Bridgers?” Before I have time to nod, a photo appears in the Zoom Chat of hers and Daniel's faces superimposed on a photo of Bridgers’ band, Better Oblivion Community Center. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with these photos, but I crack myself up with the editing.”
“I’m also working on an EP, which is almost finished. I’m really excited about that—I genuinely like all the songs on it, and I’ve learned not to release anything that I don’t love or someone will dig up the one song I don’t like and say, ‘This is my favourite.’ It’s all produced by me, and I learned a lot doing it. I really want to do a physical release on CDs, and buy a CD burner and make them at home. I’m probably only going to make about fifty of them, but I’ll put love and care into every single one.”
CA: Where can our readers at Periphery find you?
KM: “I’m on Spotify and everywhere else. I actually just made a website, which I’m super excited about: I like coding and design, so I had lots of fun making this ‘loveably hideous’ website.”
As one of the brightest up-and-coming folk artists that I’ve heard this year, I’d recommend "Pacing" to anyone with a taste in music akin to Phoebe Bridgers, Julia Jacklin, and a pinch of Marika Hackman, and I eagerly await her 2022 EP release!
Periphery Magazine thanks Katie McTigue for her contribution, and wishes her luck with her upcoming EP release! You can find Katie on social media and streaming platforms here: