Episode 19: Katie Pruitt

Nashville based musician and songwriter Katie Pruitt possesses a powerful voice and an equally powerful and brave spirit. Her debut album, just out on Rounder Records, “Expectations” is a wonderful collection of songs addressing difficult personal topics: mental health, toxic relationships, and her personal journey as a gay woman growing up in a southern Christian family. Katie is generous and thoughtful in our discussion as she talks about these tricky issues and how writing and singing these songs, ultimately, led to a greater understanding of herself and with her family and those close to her. We also hear about how her early jam band fandom influences her live performance approach, high school wake and bakes, and we attempt to answer the age old question: is it cool to be a theater kid?

The debut album from Katie Pruitt, Expectations is a glowingly detailed collection of real-life stories, a courageous document of coming of age in a sometimes-unwelcoming world. With a narrative voice at turns poetic and unaffected, the Georgia-bred singer/songwriter/guitarist treads endlessly complex emotional ground

     “I called the album Expectations because I liked that it was ironic,” says the 25-year-old artist, now based in Nashville. “This record’s really about letting go of what other people expect from you, and being free to be to just finally be yourself.”

     Co-produced by Pruitt and her close friend Michael Robinson at the home studio of Rounder Records’ Gary Paczosa, Expectations gracefully showcases her captivating voice—an instrument that alternately soars and howls and softens to a near-whisper. And while the album unfolds in a guitar-fueled sound steeped in folk and country and rock-and-roll, each track stays centered on the lucid songwriting that recently landed Pruitt on a “20 Artists To Watch In 2019” from NPR.