Atlanta-born Katie Pruitt is coming back to Georgia to play Terminal West on Nov. 15.
Pruitt is on tour for her third album, “Fools for the Fleeting,” which features her signature personal lyricism, driving guitars, and sumptuous harmonies. Pruitt, who grew up in the Atlanta suburbs, broke through in 2019 with songs like “Expectations,” a groovy track about the weight of living up to everyone else’s expectations of you, and “Loving Her,” a beautiful love song that also deals with the stigma that surrounds queer love.
Pruitt has written extensively about being a queer woman growing up in the South, finding her audience with her authenticity and soft rock sound. Now, she said, she wants to try to expand that audience, drawing people in with the music and, hopefully, enticing them to dive deeper into her catalogue and learn more about her perspective.
Ahead of her show at Terminal West on Nov. 15, I spoke with Pruitt about her work. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
To kick us off, I’d love to hear about how the tour has been so far.
Katie Pruitt: It’s been awesome. Seattle was our last show. It was hype and packed, and I love Seattle. I’ve been really – I mean, not that I haven’t done this in tours past – but I’ve been even more intentional about making moments of the show, or moments of the tour, that really feel like I’m intimately connecting with the people that are choosing to spend their time at my show. Like in Seattle, I went out and did a little acoustic sidewalk performance before the show even started. It was sweet.
I also have been doing this thing where I put a video up, and was like – hey, if anybody wants to sing the second verse of my song “Blackout” with me, which is already a duet – so I’ve been singing with different singers in every city, which has been interesting and fun. It’s cool. It breaks up the monotony of playing a similar show every night. It creates a core memory for me and for them, and it’s been cool.
I’ve known your music for a while, but I feel like recently you’ve been a little more active on Instagram – I saw both of the things you’re talking about, as far as going outside and the call for someone to sing the song with you – is that something you’re actively thinking about? As far as connecting with fans, I’m curious how you think about social media.
Pruitt: I’m thinking about it in the way that I want to give the people an opportunity to discover my music if they want. [Laughs] You know what I mean? Like, I think social media is a tool, so you may as well use it. But it also – I mean, I talk about it on my record. It’s a healthy balance. Right now, I’m in the middle of a pretty heavy album cycle and tour, so I’m more active on there. But I one hundred percent am looking forward to a time where I get to kind of put it down and be with my family and friends.
But, I’ve been trying to focus on capturing moments like that. Like, I’m just proud that this happened, and this was a sweet moment, and I want to share it. It feels kind of less promotional than other things.
To jump to the album a bit, you have a couple of features on this new album, and I feel like that’s something that’s a little new for you. Could you talk about bringing those artists in and deciding to do that?
Pruitt: Well, for Nolan [Taylor], it was kind of an accident. “Blackout” was one of the first songs that sort of spearheaded the vision of the record. I wrote half of it by myself, and then we just conveniently had a session on the books for the next day. I feel like I just had this gut feeling that was like – maybe don’t finish the song tonight, you know? Maybe just kind of put it down, go to bed, bring it to the session tomorrow. Because, especially on that chorus, I was like – even if it was just a harmony, it’d be cool to have him on it.
It was one of those special moments where we went in, we finished the song in like, an hour, and then we recorded an entire track. And that is what you hear on the album … This like, rarely ever happens, I feel like. So when it does, it’s special. I mean, Nolan’s voice is amazing, and I respect his songwriting and his artistry. So he was kind of a fun person to randomly have feature on a song with me.
As far as Sierra Hull goes, we’ve crossed paths at many different festivals, and we’ve been in each other’s orbit for a minute. I just knew that “Orion’s Belt,” that song needed something grounding, something tactile, and it had too many acoustic guitars already. So, I was like, what about mandolin? And I was like, wait – I know one of the best mandolin players in the world [laughs] that I could just text, and she’s a sweetheart. Luckily, she said yes, she’d be honored, and she came and knocked it out in like, an hour. I’m just proud that she played on the song … I love her so much, and want to give her her flowers.
You brought up the idea of writing half a song – looking through the credits, there are songs where you write alone, there are some songs where you write with co-writers. Is there something you prefer more? Are you more of an internal writer, getting it all out by yourself first before moving into any collaborations? What does that process look like for you?
Pruitt: I’d say the first one, probably. I mean, “Blackout” was kind of an exception. Because usually, if I feel the instinct to finish a song, I’m gonna finish it. But just for some reason, with that one, I was like – maybe just hold. Maybe just wait. And I’m glad I did, because it meant I could involve another artist, and that was great.
But for most of my songs, I want to get as much stream of consciousness thinking and feeling out, and then I [pare] it back from there. I kind of look at it, and I’m like, okay, does this line need editing? And a lot of the time, if I’m co-writing, or I know I have a session coming up, I’ll try to start a song. Especially if I know I’m writing for my record, I really want it to be coming from me. I don’t want to get into a session and someone’s like, “Have you ever considered writing a song about this?” It’s a little uncomfortable. So, I feel like I sort of have to be the spearhead – like, this is what I want to say. And then that makes it easier for a co-writer to be like, “Okay, let me help you say that.”
My past albums don’t have a ton of co-writing. This one has a little more, just because of the structure of my life, I think, at the time [laughs]. But, I mean, some of my favorite songs just kind of naturally come out at like, 2 a.m. in the morning. It’s one of those things where I’m like, I can’t help it – this is just what’s happening. Sometimes I wake up and I’m like, did I hallucinate that whole thing, and then I look at the voice memo, and I’m like, no I didn’t! I’ve got a song.
One thing I really like about your lyrics and I associate this with very good traditional country music, is there’s a simplicity to what’s happening, but it’s still very poetic. How do you think your songwriting and that process has evolved for you over the years?
Pruitt: You know, I think there’s a time to get specific, and, like you said, there’s a time to kind of zoom out and make it so that somebody that might not expect to latch onto your music would latch onto your music, and then dive deeper. I feel like I’m always trying to appeal to a listener’s empathy. When I listen to music, I’m not necessarily always thinking about the songwriter that wrote it. So I do think there’s a healthy balance between me being a storyteller and talking about personal details in my life, and also somebody just catching a vibe from a song … I love that my first album, and even my second album, really dove into the specifics of growing up queer in the South. I think that was a really good way to start out, because it allowed me to find my specific people in the world and in the country, and people that were like, I lived that same exact experience. Now, I’m kind of trying to find other people that might not expect to like my music. And then, maybe they delve deeper and they’re like, oh sh*t – I never thought about the perspective of a queer woman growing up in the South before, but now I am because I’m already in with this other song.
I also was just kind of writing about my life at the time, on this record, which was a lot of tumultuous things happening in the world. I feel like climate change is kind of a heavy thing. I feel like politically, it’s kind of been heavy – up until literally last night [writer’s note: we spoke the day after election night]. I was trying to capture all that, and then all of the heaviness and the changes, but also wanting to ground yourself in the things that are still good, and are still positive and hopeful. That’s kind of the overall vibe of this record for me.
I also wanted to touch on the production. This is produced by Isaiah Beard, and you’re also a co-producer. Could you talk about working with him and that collaboration? You’ve mentioned harmonies within this conversation, and I love the harmonies on “Little Boxes.”
Pruitt: That song in particular was a blast, and I think we kind of didn’t expect that song. I was like, I wrote this song about social media fatigue, and he was like, alright, let’s hear it. Then I played it, and he was like, I can hear this like, really slapping! I feel like it’s fun to work with a producer who feels like just a bud – Isaiah is just a good friend of mine, and I really trust his taste. I really trust his opinions. So I felt like it really was a collaborative process with him and I.
But the harmonies in “Little Boxes” – we had done the entire song, and I sort of already knew where I wanted it to be in the track list. I knew I wanted “Little Boxes” into this other song, “Not Scared to Die.” I was like, what if we – and I’m not good at this. Like, I don’t know how to transpose. But Isaiah is, luckily. So I was like, what if we did this harmony outro that weaved its way into the next key of the next song?
We spent a couple hours stacking those “oohs” and those layers. It was fun, because there was already that detail of [starts singing], “Little boxes.” There’s already harmonies in the song that were fun, and I was like, what if we just continue that thread? It was a blast.
Having been on tour for a bit now, is there a song that’s popping when you play it live? Not necessarily your favorite song on the album, but something that has become really fun to play?
Pruitt: A lot of the songs are very fun to play live. I’ve got my amazing tour manager, who is also a background vocalist for me and then spent the first half of her year singing backup for Tori Amos.
Oh wow!
Pruitt: Yeah, insanely good! My bass player is also a great singer. So we’ve got these three-part harmonies that have just, I feel, elevated the set in a way that’s been really nice. “Little Boxes” is fun, because they do the background on that, and then “Not Scared to Die” is very fun because we do three-part harmony. “Aftermath” is a blast to play. One that sort of snuck up on me that I didn’t know how it would play live is the very last song on the record called “As Far As Forever.” That’s been a really, really fun one to play. There’s a lot in that song – it’s kind of a dense song. It says a lot. I feel like I try to say as much as possible in like, four minutes [laughs]. That one has been a fun one to play. I don’t know – I like playing them all.
