Cat Clyde

Canadian songwriter Cat Clyde's music exists in a sonic overlap; the rockabilly grit of contemporaries like Sierra Ferrell, The Deslondes, or Nick Shoulders, meets the vulnerable, folk rock volatility of Big Thief or Angel Olsen.

Clyde’s foundational relationship with music began through a vent in the floor. “I’d lift the rug up to hear my grandfather playing his fiddle along to cassette tapes in the basement.” This was in North Ontario at summertime family gatherings, the best of which would culminate in impromptu family jam sessions. “I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t singing.”

After a fleeting, childhood stint with the piano, Clyde took on the guitar around age thirteen. “When I discovered Blues music — well — that changed my life.” The riffs of Lead Belly and Robert Johnson were too complicated for her small, preteen hands to master, but they inspired Clyde to write her own songs.

She busked through adolescence, joined a punk band called Shit Bats in college, and recorded her first album in a friend’s basement before she graduated. Four full-lengths later, Clyde’s voice vibrates with that ferocious confidence of one who’s been doing this her whole life.

Her music exudes a nomadic independence. Clyde penned some of her songs in her 1973 Boler trailer, parked temporarily on a farm in Ontario, others on a narrow boat in England, and the rest in transit from one festival to another, letting lyrics stream freely from a jetlagged dream state.