Keep Art Alive :: Photo by Curtis Brown Photography

Keep Art Alive :: The 10 Questions Project :: Featuring Kat Robichaud

1. What music (or other art form) inspires you when you create your art?

Different things, depending on what I need. Currently I’ve been listening to ELO and Marilyn Manson’s “Mechanical Animals” because I’m looking for inspiration for a song about online voyeurism, and I want the instrumentation to have a computerized electronic sound. It’s good to have examples of what you like when you’re in the studio and you need to quickly communicate your vision.

2. Long distance road trip: what three people do you invite along (fictional or non-fictional, dead or alive)?

Beetlejuice, Amanda Palmer, The Doctor. SO MUCH WHIMSY.

3. What is your favorite breakfast cereal?

I get bored with just one. I like to mix three different cereals at a time. I’ll usually have two healthy cereals with lots of fiber, and then a sugary, bad-for-you cereal. I’ll top it with raw almonds and hazelnuts and drown it in coconut milk. It’s almost a ritual. I miss Shrek cereal. Can they bring that back? Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs is basically cereal crack. That stuff is amazing but I can’t imagine what it does to your teeth and insides.

4. What is one thing that is hanging on your bedroom wall?

5. What smell/scent evokes strong memories for you?

My dad had a Polo cologne that he wore for as long as I can remember. Whenever I smell someone else wearing it, it reminds me of being a little girl, growing up in a yellow brick house on top of a big hill. My brothers and I had so much fun as kids riding our bikes up and down that hill, raking leaves into huge piles and jumping into them, and climbing trees. We grew up in Concord, North Carolina in the 80s and 90s. There was nothing there, still isn’t really, but it was a safe place where we could run around the neighborhood freely without worrying about being kidnapped or being hit by a car.

6. Coffee or tea?

Tea. I’m a huge tea drinker. It’s part of my morning ritual. First my cereal. Then I like to cut up some fruit, usually a mango, and have it with green tea. I like using local honey, too, because it’s supposed to help with allergies, which I have plenty of. My husband is a coffee fiend and invested in a nice espresso machine several years ago. It’s his baby. I have no idea how to use it, but every now and then I’ll have a latte.

7. What has been the most impactful compliment, or criticism, you have ever received?

Sarah Lee Guthrie (Arlo Guthrie’s granddaughter) once told me how important it was to play an instrument, to not just be a singer, especially if you’re a girl. You’ll be taken more seriously and you’ll have more to offer. At least I think it was Sarah Lee who said it. We played a show together when I was fresh out of high school. It could have been Kitty West that said that the same night. I can’t remember. So I know how to play guitar and I’m learning to hold my own with piano. I don’t hide behind instruments though, as Sarah was also suggesting as a plus. I’m very comfortable on stage with or without. It took a long time, but I learned how to hold myself on stage and how to move, and what works for me.

8. Three words that describe you?

Guilt. Virgo. Girl.

Guilt- because I walk around in a constant cloud of guilt. I don’t know if I get it from my dad or if it’s a WASP thing, but I will find things to feel guilty about or worry about. I don’t know why. I try very hard to enjoy things and to live in the moment more, but I’m always worried there’s something I’m not doing or something that I’m not doing well enough. When I go to sleep at night, past memories will come back to haunt me, and they’re all silly immaterial things that don’t matter anymore and probably didn’t matter then. Sometimes in order for me to clear my mind and drift off to sleep, I have to write fan fiction in my head. If I try and write lyrics, I’ll never go to bed.

Virgo- because I am one, and I think the description fits me perfectly. I’m a perfectionist, A-type personality that spends more time living inside her head than in the real world. I’m also a loyal friend, or at least I like to think I am.

Girl- because I will probably never grow up. Even if we decide to have kids someday, I think I’ll always be a little girl with a big dream. That worries me (see Guilt) because I don’t think I’m going to handle getting old very well.

9. What is/was your cartoon character crush?

It’s weird, but as a little girl, I had a thing for Beetlejuice. He was my imaginary friend and we got in a ton of trouble together. I once got locked out of the house and tragically abandoned for a sunny afternoon because I was playing in the backyard with Beetlejuice and didn’t hear my mom or dad call me. My parents were on their way to my brother’s baseball game and each of them though they had me. This is before the age of cellphones, so they didn’t realize I was missing until they got to the field. I sat on the back porch with my legs tucked into my oversized tie-dye shirt and wept for hours. I was like a dog who thought its masters had left forever. It’s ridiculous to think about now, but I was so scared.

10. The world is ending in ten minutes and you get to listen to one, and only one, song: Which song?

Oh, probably Bohemian Rhapsody. That song has everything you need. Everything that I need, anyway.

 

Bohemian Rhapsody :: Queen

Editor’s note: Such a great “last song on earth” choice – Kat, have you ever covered this song? I can hear you singing it.

There are quite a few ways to keep up with Kat Robichaud’s, and her music. But before I share with you all the links and spaces, I want to encourage you to click on over to her kickstart page and help her make her first solo album – anything you can give can help, even the amount you’d spend on a morning coffee. Keeping art alive, and support art and artists, is one of the main reason I created lyriquediscorde, and it is my blog’s mission statement – and this is a huge opportunity to put that mission into action.

You can also visit her website here, and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Scream :: Kat Robichaud (with The Design)

Reckless Boys :: Kat Robichaud (with The Design)

I love the music Kat made with her past band, The Design – but I cannot wait for her solo album!

I want to thank Kat for participating in the Keep Art Alive: 10 Questions Project. I first discovered Kat’s amazing musical talent on last season’s The Voice. She blew me away from her audition performance, and had me awe-struck and fangirling like crazy when she did her version of Sail. She is unique and artistic and truly her own artist, bringing a mixture of classic rock, goth, caberet and something else entirely into one very enthusiastic and honest package. She is an amazing talent and I cannot wait to see, and hear, what she does next.

Don’t forget – click HERE and help make her solo album a reality. KEEP ART ALIVE – always.