Born in London, Katy and her family moved to Long Island, New York when she was 2. That’s where she started to sing country, but her appetite for all types of music was insatiable. Returning to the UK, she tried to share the records she loved with school friends, to blank looks all round. But not only was she undaunted, her nascent talent was further encouraged by a family trip to the US.
“When I was about 13, my Dad surprised my Mom with an Elvis trip,” she explains. “We literally followed his life story through the south. It was three weeks, and six states. When we got to Sun Studios, we were doing the museum tour and ‘Hound Dog’ came on. I was singing along to it under my breath and the tour guide came up and said ‘Stay behind afterwards.’ I was like ‘Oh my god, I’m in trouble now, they’re going to kick me out of Sun Studios.’
“But she said ‘I heard you singing. The studio’s free, do you want to go in?’ She handed me a ring binder and just said ‘Pick a song and we’ll go and record it.’ In that tiny little booth, I put the headphones on and I remember thinking ‘I never want to do anything else, this is it for me.’”
A concert on that trip confirmed her love of modern country heroes Rascal Flatts, who take their place in her all-time favourites along with Patsy Cline. “I thought, ‘I need to write songs that can go from the studio to this moment,’ and I haven’t really stopped since.” Indeed, although a flair for science looked as if it might lead her towards a career in forensics, music won hands down.
“I loved words,” she says. “My dad speaks three languages and my mum speaks five. I call myself a word nerd, I find it interesting and as a songwriter. I find having different languages and accents can actually change the way that you write. I couldn’t stop writing; I would find myself constantly getting into trouble for doodling lyrics around my homework.”
These days, her homework is also her passion, as she tests her skills in contrasting styles. “I like challenging myself as a writer,” she says. “It’s really easy to sit down and write the same way every time, but then you never throw yourself out of the box.”
That versatility had her gigging from the age of 14, any place that would have her and a few that probably weren’t supposed to, given her age. To enhance her education, she immersed herself in every type of music she could find, from metal to new romantic and from Bocelli to Shakira. “I knew when I went into music that I couldn’t just expect things to happen if I didn’t put in the work to learn about the history of it,” she says.
In 2013, Hurt reached the finals of the Live and Unsigned competition at London’s O2; the following year, she was triumphant at the Rockfield Country Music Festival’s Battle of the Bands. 2014 also brought her first EP, ‘Blue Snake’ prompting a nomination at the British Country Music Awards for Horizon Act of the Year.
The single ‘Part Time Girlfriend’ went on to reach not only No. 2 on the UK country chart but the top 20 of iTunes’ worldwide country listing, and by now the momentum was undeniable. Katy was signed as a Yamaha Artist, graduated from ACM’s Song-writing & Artist Development programme and became their first ever student to land a publishing deal, with the leading independent Metropolis Music. Now there’s the Pieces Of Me EP, the best representation yet of the breadth of her song-writing imagination with influences from Johnny Cash to John Mayer. Written chiefly with her guitarist, Gab Zsapka, who then produced it together, it was recorded live in just six hours of studio time.
“I wanted to do something before I got to album stage,” she explains, “and I had these songs I’d been playing with my band. Four of them are in the traditional style I grew up on, and four in the more modern country style that I am now playing as a musician. I just wanted it to be as honest to myself and the sound as it possibly could be, because if you come to one of our shows, that’s what you’ll hear.”
Katy’s new single Natchez is dynamic with an acoustic blend.
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