Karen Ponzio Photo
Kath Bloom at Best Video March 2018
“I love the morning. It’s my favorite time,” said Kath Bloom, legendary New Haven-based singer-songwriter who spoke recently about her upcoming gig at Best Video on Aug. 4, a lifetime of getting up early, and remaining an influential and important contributor to the Connecticut folk music scene and beyond nearly 40 years after she became a part of it.
“I get up at 5 a.m. every day,” Bloom said. She lives in Litchfield County, but recently has been leaving her home and touring more as well as getting more press, due to increasing demand for her music and musical catalogue — releases that reach as far back as the late ‘70s and as recently as 2017.
“I never got into the touring life,” said Bloom. “I worked in my communities where I lived. I have played some faraway places, though — Japan, Australia, Europe — and now we’re doing quite a bit of touring, local and L.A. mostly. I always did one U.S. tour a year. I have friends in California, plus it’s nice out there, places like Big Sur.”
“The only tours I did were places I really wanted to go see,” she added. “I really do think a lot of traveling, but also I think New England is one of the most beautiful places to visit.”
At the time of our conversation Bloom was scheduled to perform two shows in New England at the end of July, one in Portland, Maine on July 27th and one at Star Island, New Hampshire on July 28th, the weekend before her show at Best Video, where she has performed often — most recently in March 2018 — and enjoys immensely.
“It’s a go-to place, a great place to work out new stuff,” said Bloom. “I think of it as a heartfelt local gig that’s really valuable. Hank Hoffman is a great guy. He’s the real deal and cares about people.”
Bloom began her career with local gigs throughout the New Haven area, arriving here by way of New York. “I was born in Long Island. I had an idyllic childhood really, walking on the beach,” she said. She and her family moved to Orange when she was 10 so her father could teach at Yale, and she went to school in Amity and Woodbridge. She lived in New Haven on and off for years, mostly when she was in her 20s, and even had a short stint working at Grove Street Cemetery.
“I wrote a lot of songs there,” said Bloom. “I would take my guitar and practice there, and then they gave me a job. It was a great kind of day.”
“It’s funny how little I remember,” she added. “I’ve lived so many places since then.”
Bloom does remember quite a bit, though — it’s just that she has done so much for so long it would be hard for anyone to keep up. She recalled an article written about her by now-NHI editor Paul Bass for the New Haven Advocate back in 1981, titled “Folk Music with a Risk,” “from when I was first playing with Tom Hanford and Loren Connors,” she said.
With a decades-long catalogue, Bloom has many songs to choose from for her performances, and she continues to add to that body of work and refine it at her own pace.
“Up until about seven years ago I was working on a song in my head all day long every day and hardly gigged,” said Bloom. “The writing has slowed down tremendously. I probably have about three or four songs halfway done right now, but I also always have unrecorded songs. Most people are always on the road, but I was mostly a songwriter and recorder.” That said, she added, “painting is my first art form. I think of records like paintings —how you put them together — and now I’m playing a bunch of songs with people I love.”
“I try to have fun,” said Bloom.“Real fun means not being mean or taking advantage of anyone and enjoying the different energies of everyone. Power trips can seriously get you down. With music, when you love what you do, it’s a beautiful transfer of energy that goes around and around, it gives back and then comes around again.”
Flo Ness, Kath Bloom, and David Shapiro at Best Video March 2018
Having fun playing music with people she loves has most recently included two very important people to Bloom: guitarist David Shapiro and percussionist-vocalist Flo Ness, who have both been playing with Bloom for the past two and three years, respectively.
“I really love him,” said Bloom about Shapiro. “And Flo, she’s just the best, so caring and so able to pay attention to detail and still have fun. I can’t do that!” Bloom added with a laugh. “The thing about art is no one’s making the artists have the facts right. Art is using energy and transferring it into another energy connecting all of us. We laugh a lot,” she added. “It’s dark times, but you have to keep going.”
Another part of Bloom’s life that keeps her going is her work with children in music classes, both private and in groups, that she conducts in Litchfield.
“I think it is of extreme importance that we become comfortable making music when we are young. It is primal. It is a big part of my life, and I’m proud of that.”
Bloom is also proud of her recent upswing in gigs, including a recent one opening for Bill Callahan, who had covered one of Bloom’s songs 10 years ago, in Cambridge. “It was a rush, a real kick,” said Bloom. In Australia she played “for a thousand people. It’s a special thing to get a response from a lot of people like that.”
Shapiro said seeing Bloom perform live is a special thing for her fans as well. “I work the merchandise table at our shows, and people are so excited to see her in their city,” he said. “They come up and tell me and talk about the honesty in her lyrics”.
Shapiro also talked about the upcoming Best Video show as well as a few dates Bloom will be playing at the end of August, which include shows in the Catskills, Turner Falls, Mass., and Willimantic. For the Best Video show Shapiro booked Austin Larkin, a solo violinist who recently moved to New Haven from Seattle. It will be his first local show. Also playing that show will be the Powers/Rollins duo, from Columbus, Ohio — Jen Powers being a friend of Shapiro’s who also became friends with Bloom after a show in Columbus.
Bloom will see more vinyl reissues of the albums she made with Loren Connors courtesy of Chapter Music, a label based in Australia that put out Bloom’s 2015 record — Pass Through Here — as well as the albums Terror in 2008 and Finally in 2005. One of those albums with Connors — Restless Faithful Desperate — was already reissued on vinyl in 2018.
Bloom is also slowly putting together a chorus of women to sing with her and is hoping to have them together for the first time at the Best Video show.
“I’ve had a very esoteric career,” said Bloom, and thankfully for all of her fans, she continues to keep having it.
More details about Bloom’s August 4 show at Best Video can be found at the Best Video website or Bloom’s website, where additional info can be found about her music, future tour dates, and reissues.
