MAKING MUSIC: Our New Playlist Series
Welcome to the first edition of Making Music!
A new playlist series brought to you by Modern Macramé to enjoy while making. The first episode comes from our founder Emily Katz.
Click here to listen and read on for all the juicy details.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you love most about music?
Many of you know me, you've seen me on our IGTV, followed along patterns, maybe bought my book? But maybe you didn't know that I used to write songs and play in my own band? As a teenager, music was my healing. Now, I tie knots, but I do aspire to play more music. So I am starting out by sharing a little bit about my musical loves.
- I used to make mix tapes. I have boxes of them from 1996-2003. Handmade labels with collaged cover art, scrawled lyrics, poems, and black and white photos.
I recently found a chest of them from 1998, and felt inspired to share my love of music with you all.
Share a story (or few) about seeing live music and what it means to you.
- Seeing live music has always been a passion of mine. The first concert I ever remember going to was front row center to see Paul Simon during the Graceland tour. My dad loved seeing live music more than almost anything, so it was and is a priority for him. Some of the live shows that stuck with me the most:
- Seeing Elliott Smith at the Crystal Ballroom in the late 1990s, I was there with a date who got me backstage. I had taken a silversmithing class in highschool and made a simple silver ring. When Elliott walked off stage after his set, I handed it to him and he thanked me.
- Dirty Three. I was at the Black Cat in DC in 2001. The show was sold out. I remember standing in the dark room surrounded by people, and as soon as the band started playing I closed my eyes. I remember feeling the music filling my ears, and all my cells, and then transporting me out of my body. I was not high. But i felt held by the music in a way I never had before.
- My dad once asked me if there was any one musician I could go see in the whole world, who would it be? I think I was 13 years old. I said Cat Stevens. We were driving over the Fremont bridge in Portland, and as we took the bend, he told me that sadly I would never see him play because he gave up music. I cried. I was so heartbroken. Years passed, and I heard he relaunched his music career as Yusef. I went to see him play in LA by myself.
- I loved the band CAKE when I was a teenager. So, when my friend Alicia J Rose, a badass director, asked me to be the female lead in the music video she was directing for the band, my 17 year old self died inside with joy.
Not only was I the costume designer for the project, but I got to drive a sweet 70's Fiat.
There are SO many most stories...
When you are making something, what do you listen to most?
- I get stuck sometimes listening to the same thing over and over. I might turn on the radio and listen to NPR, just as background noise, occasionally focusing on it, but mostly just having it on for company. I am embarrassed to admit that often I listen to whatever Spotify suggests to me... But I am hoping this exercise changes that!
Tell us something about you that might surprise us.
- in 2008 I had a band called LOVE MENU that recorded our one and only album: Limerence, at Dub Narcotic in Olympia. We went on a tour through California, and at one of our shows, on Earth Day, at the Headlands Center for the Arts, we played in a Geodesic Dome with bicycle powered amplification. The wind was blowing, tears were in the eyes of my drummer, Will Oldham was sitting on a blanket having a picnic and watching me sing. It was just the most beautiful moment. Then one of the guys running the show asked me to mention to the crowd that if they were parked in the upper lot, they should move their cars, since the wind was knocking down branches.
Well, turns out my car took the brunt of the damage. After our GLORIOUS set, I found my blue Jetta wagon with a fully smashed windshield and sunroof. We canceled the rest of the tour, and the band drove home in our other car without me.
On the bright side, I made a new friend who took care of me and let me stay with her for a week while I waited for my car to get fixed!
More to come about this soon, I hope...
What is your favorite song on the playlist? and why?
- They are all my favorite! Many of my friend's bands have showed up here, bands and musicians that I have loved for my whole life, and some that are new to me but that I had to share. Here are two that stick out.
"Suite Judy Blue Eyes" by CSN
This is the music of my childhood. My dad had the 4 cd boxed set and I remember listening to it laying on the rug (the white one we weren't allowed to wear our shoes on) over and over again.
After a road trip from Portland to Sedona, AZ that my friend Anne Parker and I took together for a photo shoot, I tried to convince her to get a line from this song as matching tattoos. She didn't bite, but I got, on the back of my left arm, the lyrics:
THRILL ME
TO THE
MARROW
What is the first album you bought?
- Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette :)
What are you most excited to launch/share/create this year?
- I am so excited to launch this playlist series! I asked a handful of my creative pals, musicians, artists, makers, shakers to create their own playlist for you all. I hope you enjoy them! Please don't forget to follow us on Spotify, and comment below to share your favorite music memories and stories.
Thank you for listening and creating along with us.