Kat Edmonson takes a jazz pop swing at Christmas classics
The jazz/pop vocalist Kat Edmonson would probably have made a great singing star in the ’40s and ’50s. But she’s also doing fine right now.
From the start, the Texasborn singer was blurring the lines between classic and alternative: Her first album in 2009 opened with back-toback covers of Gershwin’s “Summertime” and The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” the latter done as a sultry torch ballad.
“I always enjoy raising eyebrows,” she said in an interview this week. “I like defying people’s expectations and getting them to think differently; that’s part of the joy of being an artist. But in the same breath, I love to bring them what’s familiar and remind them of what feels good inside of them. And that’s not for the sake of safety, it’s more about being comfortable. In my show and my music I’m ultimately driving to a place of vulnerability, and I want the audience to go there with me. So I don’t turn out the classics because everybody likes them, it’s more because I want to put them into a warm and fuzzy place, so we can go deeper into the vulnerability of what the music has to offer.”
One of her favorite things to do, she says, is to completely rearrange a familiar song — something she definitely did with the Cure tune. “I fell in love with that song in high school and would always request it at parties. I’d love to spin around on the dance floor and get lost in it, and it always takes me back to being 14 and in love with a new person every week. It was the kind of song that I wanted someone to sing for me. So when I sang it, I took all my romantic feelings about the song and made it more of a sensual thing.”
Thursday night at City Winery she’ll connect with another longstanding love, namely Christmas music. Her new album “Holiday Swingin’ ” offers impeccably hip takes on the Christmas classics, plus an occasional ringer like the ’50s novelty “The Chipmunk Song.”
As she said, “I grew up loving those old records, my mom was always playing them. As I’ve been getting older and learning more about the music I love, I’ve realized that Christmas tunes weren’t always such a thing; then there were movies like ‘White Christmas’ and it started exploding. So that’s something I absolutely cherish. I know there are always camps — some people never want to hear Christmas songs again, but I’m part of the camp that can’t wait.”
During shutdown she got to realize another longtime ambition; being the host of an old-fashioned variety show. Her weekly livestreams grew into a full-fledged production with sets, comedy, special guests and audience requests; and all 60-plus episodes of “The Kat Edmondson Show” can now be found on YouTube.
“I loved reruns of the variety shows that Dean Martin and Dinah Shore and Perry Como hosted, and always had the fantasy that I could do that too. I loved how those people could do everything — Dean Martin sang, danced, acted, hosted a show. And I always assumed that’s what it meant to have a career in show business. When I actually got into show business I saw that things are done differently now, but this was my chance to have the variety show I always wanted.”
Part of the shows was realtime interaction with the online audience. “It’s a much different relationship; when I perform live it’s more a onesided conversation. But I loved getting to know my fans better, and it became like a club. As things went on, I discovered they were more compassionate than I thought, more open-minded than I ever expected them to be. That created such an intimacy with the audience, and I can’t imagine giving that up.”