Page 11 - BiTS_05_MAY_2022

The BiTS Interview: Kathy Murray

Following the 2018 release of the acclaimed “Premonition of Love”, Austin's GRAMMY-
nominated singer-songwriter Kathy Murray and her band, the Kilowatts, have returned

with “Fully Charged”, a high voltage blues collection. Murray's immersion in the music
of Freddie King, Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Fabulous Thunderbirds, along with the

many regional styles of Texas roots music, is in powerful evidence throughout eleven
sublime originals and three fresh covers.

Kathy, along with co-writers Rick Estrin, Christoffer Andersen, and Frank Bey were
nominated in the 2020 Grammys for "Best Traditional Blues Album" for "All My Dues

Are Paid", the title track on Frank Bey's posthumous CD.

Ian McKenzie spoke to her on the telephone.

BiTS: Okay, let’s make a start then. Kathy, I want to

know how you got into music in the first place. I gather
you were a military kid and got dragged around the
world when you were young.

KM: Yes, my father was a Colonel in the US Army. I
was born in Virginia and then we moved to Georgia.
Three years in Hawaii. Quite a long stretch in
Michigan in Ypsilanti right outside of Ann Arbor
and then when he retired, we came down to
Austin.

BiTS: That I understand was 1968. That’s
just over 50 years ago.

KM: Yes. Yes.

BiTS: A long, long time.

KM: I’ve seen a lot of changes here.

BiTS: I’m sure you have. How did you get
into the blues to start off with? Were
you attracted by local music or what?

KM: When I was 16, a good friend of
mine in school, Eddie Stout, who
now runs the Eastside Kings

Festival here in Austin and he has
Dialtone Records. We’re going to
play the festival this September.
We were kids and he told my little brother David Murray, who’s a very well-known guitar
player in Texas, he’s played with Marcia Ball, Angela Strehli, etc., about a great guitar player
that we needed to go see named Stevie Vaughan. We went out to the Armadillo World
headquarters that night and back then in Austin things were very wide open and 14 and 16-
year-old kids, there was no problem for us to get into the Armadillo, buy a pitcher of beer