| Kath Bloom is a fifty year old American legend of folk, country, blues and avant-garde music, but very few people have ever heard of her. She has been making records since the late 70s, and has had her music featured in the movie Before Sunrise by Richard Linklater (starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy), but since 1984 has released no new material of her own bar a few self-distributed cassettes and CD-Rs.
Born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, and trained as a cellist, Kath soon gave away formal musical education for the acoustic guitar, which she taught herself over long afternoons spent among the tombstones of her local cemetery. She met avant-garde guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors in 1976, teaming up with him for a series of now highly sought-after recordings of traditional blues and folk songs and Bloom originals. Some records were released in editions of as few as fifty, most no more than 200 copies, until the duo released their swansong Moonlight in 1984.
Finally is a compilation of Kath Bloom’s heartbreaking, lovelorn and remarkably beautiful songs recorded since the early 90s, when after a period of child-rearing and family life, she began to return to the studio. These songs reveal a mother-of-three songwriter as accomplished and affecting as any of her more acclaimed colleagues such as Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch or Hazel Dickens. |
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