Katy Rose Bennett has been writing and performing her idiosyncratic, elegant folk for over 20 years. October 2020 sees the release of her 6th solo album Where Does It Hurt? An Introduction to Katy Rose Bennett.
There was a time in the early 2000s when Katy Rose Bennett (or KTB as she used to be known) was on the cusp of breaking through: she had been a finalist in the BBC Young Folk Award, she had performed on the main stage at Truck Festival with a 16-piece band and she had been invited to play at SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas on the back of the critical success of her quirky debut album, All Calm In Dreamland.
But then, aged 20, it all went a bit sideways – Katy’s mental health suddenly declined with the start of a cycle of brief manic episodes followed by seemingly endless months of silent depression, which continued for several years. All while she was theoretically studying for a music degree.
After finishing her degree, and with her mental health improving, she continued to write, perform and record, releasing the rich and varied Indelible Ink in 2009. In her personal life, she got married, bought a house and became a parent and songwriting and gigging became a hobby. On occasional weekends, over two years, Katy and her brother and long-time collaborator Joe Bennett (Goldrush and Dreaming Spires) recorded a 4th album, the joyful and tender Songs of The River Rea (2016) inspired by life alongside Birmingham’s hidden river.
A year later, Katy’s life imploded with the sudden onset of a bizarre and little understood condition, Functional Neurological Disorder. In Katy’s case, it caused her legs to stop functioning properly for significant periods of time, causing her to be often unable to walk. It changed everything. Katy quit her job as a music therapist and found herself living with a friend for a peppercorn rent in a dilapidated, Victorian park keeper’s lodge in the centre of Birmingham.
Where Does It Hurt? An Introduction to Katy Rose Bennett contains eight songs from Katy’s extensive back-catalogue alongside two brand new songs – the album’s title track and one other, both recorded during the UK lockdown. The songs Katy has carefully selected, represent her unique songwriting style and her many and varied influences over the years.
Watch the accompanying video for the title track below and read, in Katy’s own words, the story behind the song and video. On the strength of this lead track alone, this new album marks a highly anticpated welcome return and rightly so.
Where Does It Hurt? – The Story Behind the Song & Video
I wrote ‘Where Does It Hurt?’ back in April 2019 after listening to an interview with Ruby Sales, the veteran American civil rights campaigner on a long drive from Birmingham to Pembrokeshire. I got to the little caravan where I was staying overlooking the sea and wrote the song in about 2 hours. The question ‘Where Does It Hurt?’ is one that Ruby poses as a way of facilitating empathy and understanding, as a way of going to the heart of an issue. The song also draws on my love of the work of Brené Brown who researches and writes about shame and vulnerability, as well as the healing power of music– I have undergone years of therapy myself and I have also trained and worked as a music therapist too.
It’s the song that when I play it at gigs (remember those?!), people come up and tell me about how it made them feel and that is a big part of why it’s special to me and also why I write songs at all – to drive connection and empathy and togetherness.
I actually contacted Ruby Sales directly to share the song with her (because, why not?) and she sent me the most gorgeous email in response including some beautiful words about the song:
“I have just listened to Where does it hurt, and I must tell you that it’s beauty and depth of feeling brought tears to my seasoned eyes. It is extraordinary how you took the phrase where does it hurt and drew out of it the obvious and hidden hurt that we experience and repress. In my estimation, the brilliance of the song is that it touches our particular feelings as well as draws out our universal ones which makes it a song that everyone can walk into and locate themselves.”
Ruby Sales
As you can imagine, receiving that made my day! Ruby and I are planning to have a little zoom interview soon to talk about her work and the question and the song, so that’s really exciting.
I only started making videos at the beginning of lockdown in March, initially as a way of sharing a cappella songs with the community choir I run, but soon I ventured into more experimental, elaborate video projects – lots of split-screen birthday videos and the like. I’ve found I have an eye for it and I also just love making music videos! The quality has definitely improved since my first attempts!
The video for the song was made in collaboration with two brilliant dancers I know from Birmingham – Sara Macqueen and Chris Radford (by the way, they’re in a bubble which is why they’re able to dance so close together!) Sara and Chris responded to an open call-out back in May for people to create something visual – videos and pictures of whatever they wanted – for a community, collaborative video for my single One Day. They choreographed an entire dance for the song, and I was pretty blown away by it. So, when it came to creating the video for ‘Where Does It Hurt?’, I invited them to work with me directly on it and we spent a day together filming at the old School of Art in Moseley, Birmingham. It’s very much a co-created, collaborative effort and it was such a joy to work with people in real life after months of lockdown and endless zoom meetings. I’m really proud of what we made together!
More here: http://www.katyrosebennett.com/
Photo Credit: Robin Beatty