South Bristol native Kate Schrock will have something new
for listeners when she sings at the Lincoln Theater this
Saturday.
Joined by her good friends – Lynn Deeves and Vicky
Andres – Schrock will be trying out “some fresh
material people haven’t heard before”. She was
in Ecuador doing humanitarian aid work last year and also
played in Jamaica with members of The Wailers, founded by
late reggae legend, Bob Marley. The experience opened her
heart “and helped mature me as an artist in a positive
way,” she said this week.
Schrock has produced five recordings on her own music label,
Kakelane Music; “ Indiana ” (2003) is her most
recent.
Acclaimed over the years for making her own kind of music,
she accompanies herself on piano – often in insistent,
repetitive crescendos – and sings introspective, pensive
ballads. The theme is usually man-woman relationships, usually
at the turning point triggered by disappointment and departure.
Her songs, fusing rock, jazz, gospel and pop, reveal a woman
searching her soul, poised on the edge of doing the next
thing, and not quite knowing what the next thing is.
Elton John’s piano style was an early, powerful influence,
along with Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder; and for songwriting,
Bob Dylan is one of her favorites. She is sometimes compared
to Tori Amos and Joni Mitchell.
Musically untrained, she preferred to play by ear at a
young age. Her deepening commitment to this one consistent
relationship in her life - music – involved a lot of “banging
on the piano” at first. While attending The University
of Chicago, Schrock, who had left home at 16, started playing
professionally. In the mid 80’s, she was lead singer
for the five-piece band Sin Embargo. She produced her first
album in 1995.
She has lived in New York , where she studied theater,
Los Angeles , Paris , where she was a fashion model for a
while, and currently resides in Westbrook.
Now 40, having toured all over the country, Schrock returns
to the Lincoln Theater this weekend with an expanded worldview.
She traveled in 2004 to Jamaica with Glen DaCosta, who
played horn for years with Bob Marley and continues to perform
and tour with The Wailers. “Being in Jamaica , you
can’t avoid delving into the philosophy of Bob Marley”,
Schrock said. “He was a visionary prophet fighting
for social justice. Much of his music is about liberating
people from inequality.”
Working with DaCosta and staying with Jamaican people,
not in resort areas, “tapped into something that was
bubbling below the surface in me. It helped me to articulate
my own frustrations and perceptions about my own country.” Being
with people spiritually rich and musically alive helped her
to see that much of the tension in the U.S. “has to
do with our focus on materialism, at the sacrifice of so
many other pertinent things”.
She wrote, “Message to Babylon ” and “Why?” addressing
this awareness and will perform them Saturday.
In Ecuador , “I got an eyeful, an earful, a heart
full of Spanish American, Latin American social inequalities.
Che Guevera wanted to unite the countries of South America
to strengthen it, to help the disenfranchised,” she
said. “These two, Marley and Guevera, were rebels who
lived their lives to serve the less fortunate and change
a system which was patronizing and exploiting so many people.” Schrock
wrote, “Rebel’s Eye” with them in mind,
she said.
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