Kat Burns

Fragile Notes

Countless musicians play live night after night to promote their recordings and build an audience. The challenge is to develop a style and sound that is distinctive and captivating. One band that seems to be putting it all together piece by piece is Forest City Lovers, a folk-rock outfit with a definite and engaging art-house feel. Over the past few years, band members have come and gone, but at the centre of the project from the beginning has been Kat Burns. She handles vocals, guitar, and keyboards, among other instruments. She is also the chief songwriter for the band. Fortunately, the rest of the Forest City Lovers line-up has now stabilized with three permanent members alongside Burns: Mika Posen, Kyle Donnelly, and Christian Ingelevics.

“The songs of Forest City Lovers are catchy, yet fragile, and hope to melt your heart, or at least make it beat.” This is the imaginative way that the sound of the group is described on their own website, and there is something to it. There is a real fragility to the songs that shines through, not from poor craftsmanship, but rather from a clear talent and ability to convey musically the delicacy of human relationships, community, and aspirations. Nowhere is this talent on better display than in ‘Song for Morrie’, from the 2006 release The Sun and the Wind, or in the gentleness of ‘Watching the Streetlights Grow’, from the more recent album Haunting Moon Sinking, which was released on the independent Toronto label Out of this Spark.



The band toured Europe this past spring with shows in France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. As a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, and with an eye for idiosyncrasy, Burns took the opportunity while traveling to check out some of the more curious sites, including the shrine to Saint Sarah, patron saint of the Roma (gypsy) people, located in Saintes-Marie-de-la-Mer near Arles in the south of France. “They had this statue of her and thousands of candles,” Burns recalls. “It was forty degrees in there, lit by candlelight, and this strange statue. It almost felt like a really weird installation piece. That to me counts as some sort of art.”

Currently the band is making a seven-inch record with a view to a fall release, and plans for a new full-length album are in the works. In support of the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto, a new song, ‘Minneapolis’, has been contributed to the forty-track compilation album Friends in Bellwoods II, alongside songs by such acts as Ohbijou and Great Lake Swimmers. It will be available August 25, 2009. The original Friends in Bellwoods compilation, released in 2007, raised more than eleven thousand dollars for the cause. Certainly there is no shortage of activity as far as Forest City Lovers is concerned.

In the following interview, Kat Burns gives her thoughts on a wide range of topics, including the evolution of Forest City Lovers, the songwriting process, her favourite places to perform in Canada, and her approach to connecting with listeners online. Her views on the current status of Canadian music on the radio, as well as the support system for emerging artists across the country, is especially interesting. With humour and considerable grace, she also handles well a somewhat awkward question regarding how her own look seems to change from photo to photo.

CI: The most recent Forest City Lovers album, Haunting Moon Sinking, has got a fair bit of attention, mostly underground. Have you been satisfied with the trajectory it has taken? You mentioned earlier that the distribution is going to be wider now. [The albums are distributed online and in physical form by Arts & Crafts distribution.]

KB: It’s definitely going to be wider, which is awesome - starting July 14th, I think. They have the CDs now. There’s a transition. I think it’s going to be much better, which will be really great because I like having smaller towns being able to get it.

Yeah, I like the way it’s going so far. I think musically it’s a progression from the last record [The Sun and the Wind], which was essentially still a solo record, and I was figuring out having people play with me and having room for arrangements and stuff. This one was definitely a little bit more cohesive idea-wise, arrangement-wise. I think the attention has been good. People have been into it. It seems to be a grower. It’s not like, ‘oh my god, this is amazing’, but people seem to come back to it, which is nice. It seems to be securing a good, dedicated fan base.

CI: The band is just starting to work on some new material.

KB: We actually recorded last week with Jamie Bunton, our friend, and we did two songs that are going to be for a seven-inch record. That should be out in the fall. It’ll come out as we’re working on and recording our next album.

CI: Are you moving in the same territory as the last album, or is this a departure at all for you?

KB: Not sure yet. Essentially it’s going to have a lot of – well, it’s still me writing most of the songs. It’s going to be the same band. I know that I want to try some new things, and I think the band is focusing more on new arrangements and bringing new ideas in. I would like to push it and experiment a little bit. I don’t want to make a totally different record, obviously, because the band has this specific sound. I don’t want to make it too crazy. It’ll be a progression, just as this recent one was a progression from the last one. I’m hoping that we just keep growing and the music keeps getting better.

CI: As the main songwriter and force behind the project, have you noticed – and I always ask this because I think it’s interesting – have you noticed any kind of pattern in your songwriting, specific conditions maybe that work for you? Early in the morning, late at night, anything like that that works for you when writing songs, or is it more random?

KB: It really depends. I tend to get inspired really late at night when I have something to do in the morning. But that just might be procrastination! Honestly, sometimes I’ll go through periods of not being able to write for a while, but it’s really strange, it’s just like it falls out of the skies. A song will just appear, I’ll finish it, and it’s just there. I don’t really know where they come from. It’s really weird.

There’s no real pattern to when I write them. It’s just whenever I feel inspired. Sometimes I get inspired after seeing other music. Being in transit often is inspiring, touring and seeing different cities and new people. It really depends on what I’ve been doing. …

CI: As you tour around and do shows, you play in a lot of different venues – in bars and clubs and at festivals. Do you think that there is any specific situation that the band is best in?

KB: I think our band is really good at adapting to different scenarios. It’s really beneficial. Not every band can adapt. We don’t necessarily have to play really loud to get the sound across. We can also play stripped down. Obviously it’s fun to play in our normal way, amplified and full everything! But we did a few shows where it was pretty stripped down. We did a couple house concerts, acoustic house concerts, and they went really well. We also enjoy playing bars that are really fun. I don’t know if there’s anywhere that we specifically do best in. Anywhere that people are listening and into it is ideal and usually the best! I like when there’s a big crowd and people are really excited. We feed off the energy. It puts a better performance out. Smaller and more intimate shows are nice, and I think it sounds good, but there’s sort of a delicacy there that sometimes brings upon a self-consciousness instead of an extrovertedness, which is sometimes required to put on a good show. If you’re thinking about it too much, that can be bad.

CI: In Europe, as you traveled around, was there any city in particular that was a highlight for you? How was the response?

KB: Berlin was amazing. Berlin was definitely our best show. It was awesome, a really wicked crowd, super into it, very cool bar. We played a couple small towns in southern Italy that were amazing - really cool people. They don’t get very much international music there, so they were really into it, which was nice and often surprising – I was just like, wow!

CI: South of Naples, but not Sicily?

KB: Yeah. It was really cool to meet brand new people who were super-excited to hear music from overseas. Some of the towns are really tiny, and it seemed like they had a pretty cool community-vibe going on, but they also never got music from outside Italy. That was kind of a highlight in itself.

CI: You keep up a fairly detailed website, putting forward what the band is doing and what you’re thinking about. It’s a nice way to connect directly with listeners and people just coming to your music, but there are also lots of bands and performers with their own websites. How do you distinguish your site? Is this where you are able to work in the other side of your artistic abilities?

KB: Well, our website right now is just actually a blog. It’s nothing really fancy. It’s pretty basic. We have MySpace and Twitter and stuff, but I feel like, because everyone has an Internet site, there’s no point in trying to make a flashy site anymore. That’s what I’m realizing. You don’t necessarily have to have a very aesthetically amazing and beautiful site with really detailed things. It doesn’t hurt. It’s nice to have. Our website will probably change. I like to change all the time, every month or so. But yeah, I just feel that, because everyone has a website, it brings it to a commonality between everyone. As long as there is content, that is what I think is more important now – content! It can look really good, but if I don’t know what’s going on with the band that I’m looking at, or if I can’t find any information, it’s just kind of a loss. Even if you have a blog with content on it that people return to and read, that’s the goal, I think. I like doing artwork for it, but I think the content at this point is more important.

CI: So you’re putting out a couple songs on a seven-inch and then planning on another album?

KB: Yeah, it should be released about a year from now.

CI: What’s the plan as far as touring or performing in the next year leading up to the new album?

KB: Well, we’re playing a couple festival-type shows this summer, and we’ll probably do a couple dates here and there in the fall, but we’re really going to focus on getting the album done and then tour to support it.

CI: Just a few shows then this fall to try out some new stuff …

KB: Yeah, and if something really amazing comes up, we’ll probably do it, but probably stay slightly reclusive for a little bit.

CI: Now I have to ask because I live fairly close to London – the name Forest City Lovers – does this have any actual connection to ‘The Forest City’, or is this something that came about some other way?

KB: If you watch Dances with Wolves, you’ll know.

CI: Fair enough. Now, the Forest City Lovers have sort of had a rotating drummer over the years, different musicians coming in and out. How did the band come together initially?

KB: Well, it’s been pretty solid for a while. Kyle and Mika and I have been playing together for over two years now. Basically in 2006 I recorded as Forest City Lovers with my friend Jamie [Bunton], who just recorded our seven-inch. I was just starting to play with other people, just kind of new to the whole thing. He was the original drummer. Then our mutual friend Andrew [Kinoshita] joined on bass. Then Mika joined. And then we just decided to change it around a bit. Mika and I both knew Kyle from different places. Kyle and I are both from the same town and went to high school together. Mika knows him from university. It was weird that we both knew this person. So he joined us on bass, and then we found Paul [Weadick]. He was our drummer for over a year, all of 2007 and a little bit of 2008. That was sort of the core, but Paul, for personal reasons, left. Then Christian recently joined. We had a rotating cast last year just because we had a bunch of tours for the record … but now Christian is our permanent drummer. Essentially we had a couple temporaries to do tours and then settled back in with a permanent drummer. It was a year of transition teaching people the same songs ten thousand times.

CI: A couple of the videos that are on YouTube you directed yourself, and there is one for ‘Song for Morrie’ that was directed by someone else [Stuart McIntyre]. What’s the plan as far as making more videos and distributing them?

KB: Well, the same director wants to do another video for us. I think we are going to be doing that this summer. Then my friend Colin [Medley] and I always make little videos. We will probably do a series of weirder ones, more arty ones. Then this other guy, Stuart McIntyre, he’d like to direct another one. His are more slick obviously, more marketable and TV friendly! That’s sort of the loose plan, to do the arty ones but also the commercial ones as well - as a balance.

CI: Let me ask you one of those standard questions. What did you listen to when you were growing up?

KB: Well, that’s going to be interesting! I really liked Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and a lot of punk rock music; I liked Rancid, NOFX, Blink-182. There’s some pretty bad music that I liked, but I also liked the classics. I was really obsessed with Queen when I was a kid. My parents had the records. The Beatles I liked, although I went through a period in high school where I actually said the Beatles sucked. I got yelled at by my friend Chris, who basically just told me that I had no idea what I was talking about. So I learned to appreciate them. I also really liked, and actually still like, Kate Bush a lot. I liked her a lot when I was growing up. … So there you go, I’ve uncovered my scrit, punk rock, Goth past.

CI: Yeah, Marilyn Manson …

KB: Well, I actually think he’s mostly a pretty intelligent marketer of himself. I used to cut out the articles about him being banned from churches, and I thought it was genius. I was fourteen and very easily swayed. …

CI: Let me ask you this: as you start a band, start writing your own songs, and getting across the country a little bit, have you been able to identify something in our music scene in this country that’s missing? Is there something that you think would be really helpful for artists that are building up their craft?

KB: We need more venues in Toronto that are for three hundred people - nice, small but not too small, so you can have an intimate show but still have enough people where it’s awesome. Do you know what I mean? But not necessarily so big where the sound of everyone talking is drowning out everything. We don’t really have anything like that. We have a couple mid-size venues, and the bigger venues, but there’s not really any that I can think of that have amazing sound as well. A good sounding venue that is medium-size is what Toronto is missing for sure, but there are some in other cities though.

Overall in Canada, I don’t know. It would be nice if commercial radio played a percentage of not only CanCon but also contemporary CanCon. I think that would really, really help - instead of filling the quota of CanCon with Nickelback, or I notice the Edge will sometimes play stuff from ten years ago like Edwin, I Mother Earth, stuff that we’ve heard a million times. Why not take the CanCon and actually use it to our advantage, and bring forward musicians that have CDs and are touring and publicize them? I know there’s obviously money being exchanged for plays. I don’t know how it all really works. Maybe I’m wrong, but it just seems that a high percentage of the CanCon is really going to people that are already established ten times over. We don’t really need to hear Econoline Crush again, you know? I’m sure they make a lot of royalties everyday from the last fifteen years.

CI: Without CBC radio, and CBC Radio 3, there’s not many radio stations that will do that, except maybe some university stations.

KB: The campus radio stations are good. NPR is really good and they have a lot of online stuff in the States. I just think CanCon should be contemporary Canadian content, at least half of it. I just think it’s a waste. Nickelback doesn’t need any more money – and no offence to anyone who likes Nickelback.

CI: In order for the radio stations to really go along with that, there also has got to be a publicity machine going along with those songs and those new artists to help people get attached to them.

KB: But I think that if young bands and new bands were getting played on The Edge, I’m sure that they would probably be pretty excited about it, and their fans would be pretty excited about it. If they were like, ‘listen here, we’re getting played’, people would be really into it and supportive, for sure. I don’t think they would necessarily have to hire someone to do that.

CI: I’m not sure what your thought on it is, but I find that this is something that is particularly the case in Toronto and in Ontario generally. When you’re out in Newfoundland and you walk into Fred’s record store on Duckworth Street in St. John’s, there’s a whole wall of music from Newfoundland and Labrador, and in Quebec they support their artists, obviously with the language factor. Here in Ontario it really seems that we’re blended so much with the Americans that …

KB: I disagree a little bit. It depends on the record store. I know that Soundscapes, Rotate This, and Criminal Records are all really good at showcasing Canadian and especially local talent. Soundscapes has an entire back rack that is completely local, independent bands that are on consignment, which is awesome. The bigger ones like HMV, yeah, everything is blended. But it really depends. The bigger ones for sure don’t do enough, but the smaller ones, I think, are trying, which is really good.

CI: At this point when you’re directing some of the videos and handling some of the merchandise, sort of managing the image of the band, do you have anything in mind particularly? Are you always thinking ‘alright, this is how I want to present Forest City Lovers?’

KB: It’s weird because a lot of the artwork tends to revolve around animals because I’m a big animal nerd. I grew up being obsessed with science and animals. There tends to be animal themes, for sure. People like that though, from what I can tell. With t-shirt designs, people always seem to buy the cute animal ones, and when I’ve tried to do something a bit weird, people don’t really seem to like it as much! I like it because I just make up weird things, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily a representation of the band. We sort of have a soft feel, everything is - the artwork is fairly ‘soft’ – I don’t know if that’s the right word. It changes. It definitely changes. But it is fairly organic-feeling, nothing too industrial or man-made.

CI: In the videos that I’ve seen from live performances, it is kind of unique – as you sing, it is quite low-key and quiet. Not always, but typically, I think. I imagine at some clubs and smaller venues you have that problem with noise where you have to hit the right volume. Do you find that, when you start off and play a little quieter, you are able to draw people in that way? Is it tough to manage that?

KB: It’s tough, but I think that the people who want to listen will listen. People who just want to, for some reason, pay fifteen dollars to talk to their friends will also do it regardless of who they’re seeing. I don’t really take offence to it or anything because people do it to Neil Young and pay a hundred and fifty dollars to talk to their friends.

But I think it is nice to start off slowly and build momentum as the show progresses. We try to work that into the set where, by the end, it’s a bit more raucous, but without losing the essence of the song – just make it feed on the energy a little bit.

CI: The pacing of a show always seems like it might be the biggest challenge.

KB: Yeah, it depends on the venue, too.

CI: Where are the peaks and where are the troughs in a show, and how to manage that – have you seen any live performances where you thought, ‘okay, that particular artist did an exceptional job in structuring their live show’?

KB: Yes. I’m trying to think what. Well, last week we saw Passion Pit, and I know they’re a big buzz band right now, but they are amazing. Toronto does not dance, but Toronto was losing its shit. That show was incredible. They knew when to bring it down, when to bring it way up. It was just insane. I’ve never seen so many people in Toronto dancing at one time. Then last night our really good friends and peers Ohbijou played their CD release. Obviously they had spent a while perfecting their performance, which was really nice. They nailed it, which is good. Those two are the ones that stand out recently, like in the last few weeks.

CI: I notice that you’ve played in Guelph quite a bit. Is there some connection?

KB: Yeah, everyone went to school there, except me. It’s a good audience.

CI: Are there any cities that you’ve played in where you felt that you had a really good response as compared to some other cities?

KB: Toronto is really fun to play in. Guelph is really fun to play in. Ottawa is usually also fun. And anywhere where we’re from, like Oshawa – Kyle and I are from Whitby - in Oshawa there are no venues anymore, but it was really fun to play it. We also like Medicine Hat. There’s a really awesome team of brothers that run ‘Young and Pretty Folk Music Association’. They put on shows. It’s in this club called the Ottoman. It’s an old strip club with mirrors. And also Sarnia, Ontario – the awesomest crowd! Our friend Eric Woolston runs a series called ‘Empty Spaces’. Basically his idea is to bring community to smaller towns. He’ll have a local band, a high school band, and an out-of-town touring band, and it’s always all-ages. Every time we play there it’s off the hook, it’s insane, it’s so cool!

CI: Does he have a particular venue there?

KB: He does have this place called ‘The Trinity’, which is also an old strip club. There seems to be a theme! I don’t know. It’s just big. It’s a nice club actually.



CI: Let me give you kind of a strange question. As I looked online at photos and videos of the band, you have - you particularly – a very unique ability to look profoundly different in different photos and videos without doing anything radical stylistically. Do you give much thought to your own presentation?

KB: What do you mean? Is this why no one ever remembers me?

CI: Well, I just can’t quite ever get a fix on the look. It’s sort of elusive, I have to admit, and I was just wondering if this is entirely in my imagination or if you purposefully think about this.

KB: Never thought about it. I’ve looked the same at least since 2007! My bangs are a little bit longer right now but that’s because I need a haircut. I don’t know. I wear different clothes – that’s about it.

CI: Maybe it’s just the videos. I don’t know why. I just thought each time, ‘okay, if I didn’t know that was her, I might not be positive that it’s the same person’.

KB: I kind of like that though, now that you say it. It’s kind of cool.

CI: There are certain artists that can do that, and I always think that it’s part of their …

KB: Master plan?

CI: Not necessarily a master plan, but just part of what draws people to them because they never quite feel that they’re getting the same person each time. Kind of a strange question, I know, but I’ve always noticed that, if you look at Bob Dylan albums through the years …

KB: Yeah, he looks different on every one.

CI: Yeah, and did he plan that?

KB: He sounds different on most of them, too. He changes his voice sometimes. ‘Lay Lady Lay’ doesn’t sound like him.

CI: Nashville Skyline is the album. He looks totally different on that cover.

KB: And he sings different.

CI: That’s why I ask. I’m a Dylan fan, and was just thinking about how he’s done that over the years. It’s pretty smart, if you think about it. Anyway, one last question for you. As you said earlier, with the website, you are more concerned with content. You are also accessible, responding to people’s comments, for example. Do you enjoy that? Are you going to keep doing that?

KB: Well, I like it personally when I go to a band’s website and it’s more like there’s someone behind it. I really hate seeing websites that are clearly written by a web content manager, and it’s really in a dry ‘this is what the band is doing’ way. It’s nice to have, not necessarily a face – it’s doesn’t matter who’s writing it, one of us could write it, that’s fine – but it’s nice to know that someone’s doing it with a personality. I don’t know. I like that. I like when people respond. It’s nice to have a dialogue because these are people who are essentially supporting your career. I feel like it’s important to respect them if they’re interested or have questions.

Date of Interview: 06/26/2009
Location: The Red Room, Spadina Ave., Toronto, ON
Link: www.playthetriangle.com