Pacific Northwest singer-songwriter Katherine Paul, whose music has been featured on ‘Reservation Dogs,’ talks about the lifetime of experience that went into her fiery, brilliant new album Katherine Paul’s third album comes on with the subtlety of a freight train as “My Blood Runs Through This Land” thunders through the speakers.
Not one to shrink from truth, Paul shares mental health struggles on the brooding “Treeline” and graces us with the gift of her singing with her parents on the chill-inducing “Spaces.” “The Land, The Water, The Sky” runs as deep as Paul’s pride for her community and gives the listener many paths to explore.
“‘The Land, the Water, the Sky’ feels like KP is reaching out, more so than her previous, more introspective albums, to an expansive version of what Black Belt Eagle Scout can be . . . with each song, you can feel the weight of an entire community behind her.” When Katherine Paul thinks back to the experiences that inspired her sweeping new album, she thinks about Sčičudᶻ, a forested path near the Salish Sea, and the salmon berries that grow there.
Salmon berries, for those who live outside of the Pacific Northwest, are sweet, tart fruits resembling blackberries or raspberries. Their name comes from their color — shades of pink or a deep red — and they’re hard to get outside of their natural habitat, as they are fragile and spoil quickly. The singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who goes by KP and performs as Black Belt Eagle Scout, would often take hikes along Sčičudᶻ, witnessing the seasons change.
As may be obvious from the title, “The Land, the Water, the Sky” is an incredibly grounded album, steeped heavily in the locale in which KP wrote it. She grew up in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, in the same area from which she took my call. More than a decade ago, she moved to Portland, Oregon, where she stayed for years, attending Lewis & Clark College and working at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls. But as the pandemic set in, KP found she couldn’t stay away from home for much longer.
“This album is a lot about the journey back home,” she says. “Moving back, and then figuring out who I am and this new phase of being an adult in my homelands.”
“That place is really special to me,” says KP, 33. “I would go there a lot during the last two, three years, to hang out and to witness what was going on. There’s a lot of things going on there.”
She recorded her new album, “The Land, the Water, the Sky”, at a studio in Anacortes, Washington, about 10 miles north of that path. But she wrote the album at various places like Sčičudᶻ, bringing a guitar along to strum chords and “feel what was around me.”
“I’m sorry I’m being a little bit of a nerd,” she says with a laugh. “But when I was saying there’s a lot that goes on, it’s like… You watch the salmon berries grow.”
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