Who Is She But The One: Kate Bollinger ‘16

Stories, Los Angeles–I’m sitting in a trendy combination bookstore and coffeehouse in L.A. when a girl walks by me. I notice her long blonde hair and cute shoes. Just as I’m having the thought, ‘those are cute boots,’ she turns on her heels and looks right at me, as if some magnet or wave pushed her in my direction. It’s Kate Bollinger. 

We recognize each other and get to talking. I had reached out to Kate earlier in the summer hoping to find a time to interview her. I never expected we would bump into each other in a city on the other side of the country from Charlottesville. We talk about how alien L.A. feels. How different it is from Virginia and the East Coast. Yet, a chance meeting like this can make the world feel really small. 

There must be some magical Tandem connection that carries across space and time. On an Antarctic cruise ship out at sea, two passengers, Dylan McAuley ‘14 and Ariel Shaker-Brown ‘07, discovered they both went to Tandem.

You may remember Kate performing at open mics or Tandemonium. Since graduating from Tandem in 2016, she’s had incredible success as a musical artist. She currently has over two million monthly listeners on Spotify and has toured with artists like Faye Webster and Liz Phair. 

In September, we spoke about her memories of Tandem and the evolution of her sound, just a few weeks before the release of her first album, Songs From A Thousand Frames of Mind.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

KB: I was trying to think of who outside my family have been my greatest teachers. One of the earliest people who I would put on this list is this guy, Gene Ausborn. I went to Young Writers Workshop at Sweetbriar, I think when I was 14 or 15, and Gene was the songwriting teacher that year. He has a band called We Are Star Children.

I remember he met with everybody individually, all of the young songwriters. He was so enthusiastic about what I was doing, and he was the first person to be like “You rock. You’re a rock star.” And I was like ‘what?!’ Cause I was a 14 year old girl, really insecure in some ways probably, and it was just really amazing to have somebody who I admired say that at that time. I feel like that gave me a lot of courage to keep doing and sharing what I was doing.

After the camp was over…he emailed me and asked me to be first of three for a show that his band was playing. That was my first-ever show, and this kind of leads me into the next person who I consider to be a teacher of mine.

I got asked to do this show, and the second band on the bill was the Extroadinaires. This guy Jay Purdy who was the front man of the Extroadinaires—they were a Charlottesville band, but then after high school I guess a lot of the guys in the band moved to Philly, and so I kind of consider them a Philly band even though they have Charlottesville ties. They were like my favorite band of all time growing up, because my oldest brother played violin on one of their albums, and so my dad and I got really into them and would listen to their CD in the car all the time. 

And they just serendipitously were the second, they were the band opening for Gene’s band. So I got this email asking ‘will you open?’ and I was like ‘oh my god, this is my favorite band ever!’  These people are like famous superstars! So that was really exciting, and I met Jay from that show and he was really enthusiastic about my songs and said ‘you should come to Philly, and we’ll be your backing band and we’ll record an EP for you.’ Both of my brothers lived in Philly at the time. I don’t know, that’s a crazy thing to say, and I’m sure some people would say that and not really mean it, but he completely meant it. I went to Philly, and I stayed with my brother and recorded my first EP…At that point I was probably 16 or 17. And that was really exciting and crazy to me, and I think gave me some confidence at the time.

And then, Jason (Farr) from Tandem. He’s one of my favorite teachers, like literal teachers, that I ever had. He was just really supportive. You know he was my history teacher, but he was really supportive of me in general and of my music.

I guess the thing a lot of these people share is they gave me a lot of confidence to keep doing what I was doing and made me feel believed in. I was having an existential crisis my senior year, and I would go into [Jason’s] classroom and just cry and talk to him and he was super understanding. 

And then, I had a professor, Lisa Spaar, who’s a poet at UVA. She is just amazing as a person and a poet, and when I was at UVA I was in the Poetry program and I felt like she was my mentor. She might have even been assigned as my mentor. Anyway, she was really encouraging, and then I had this realization while I was at UVA that it was hard to be in the Poetry program and take my music seriously, because writing poems every week for class and also trying to write songs sort of exhausted the same part of me. I felt like I couldn’t do both well enough at the same time. So I decided to leave the Poetry program and switch to Cinematography, which is what I studied, and she was really supportive of that even though she was my poetry professor. That meant a lot to me.

The last person that I wrote down is Matt White, my friend from Richmond. I met him during the Pandemic when I was living in Richmond, and we just became really fast friends and started writing songs together, like every week or every few weeks. We would just get together and talk for 2 or 3 hours and then write a song. And a lot of the stuff I was going through at that time reminded him of what he had been going through 10 years before, especially stuff with the music industry and band dynamics, and just a lot of things that I had never been exposed to up until that point and was having a lot of trouble with. He just became a really good friend.

Anytime anything happens with music, or the industry, or whatever, that I’m confused about or feel upset about, I pretty much text or call him immediately.

KB: I think I can do that a little bit more now. Sometimes I’ll write something and I’ll work it into a song, but at the time it was completely separate, but sort of using the same muscle. But I couldn’t take a poem and be like ‘oh, this works as a song, too.’

KB: I’ve been getting back into a lot of the Elephant 6 bands like Of Montreal, the Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, a  lot of those ‘90s bands both on a musical level and the visual style that a lot of them had at the time. 

They have a sort of ‘60s-inspired feel but done in this ‘90s way that I really like, and then they also had a lot of attention to detail with every part of the project which I really appreciate, every piece of the record feels homemade kind of. So, I love those bands.

I’ve been getting into Laura Nyro in the last year, and I love her. And then R. Stevie Moore, I’ve been really into and he’s the–I think people call him “the godfather of home recording”-and that’s made me want to get back into recording myself.

KB: Well, this just popped into my head, I think for the videos more recent influences of mine haven’t been other music videos. For example, this video that I’m working on now, or that I’m starting to work on, the idea is, I know I want it to be sort of like a ‘60s girls marching band kind of feel, and so I’ve been listening to the song and watching found footage on Youtube of marching bands. So that’s been something that’s helpful to me. Rather than watching other music videos, usually I’ll just find the thing that I’m influenced by, and then I’ll mute the video and watch it with the song and that leads to other ideas.

I think pretty much anything can be a good music video. I remember I was at this bar on tour and there was like some nature documentary playing, but then there was music in the bar and I was like this is amazing together. I like videos that are also edited like a short film that has music behind it, not edited totally like a music video.

Then, with the childlike thing... Of course, a lot of great art is disturbing on some level or makes you think about things in some new way, but the art that I like the most–going back to the Elephant 6 thing–a lot of that art feels like art from children’s books. It feels very comforting to look at and it’s inspiring…I feel like a lot of people think that art needs to be this disturbing thing, but I like art that makes you feel a sense of comfort. Or, at least personally, that’s kind of what I want the stuff that I make to be like.

As a kid I loved Gwen Stefani, and she has a lot of cool music videos. There’s one, I forget if it’s Gwen Stefani or No Doubt, but the song is “It’s My Life,” and she’s like killing all of these men, and it’s violent—like you said something about how some of my videos are violent—but it’s done in this sort of silly way, and it makes it fun and funny. So I think maybe that video is what put the idea in my head. 

KB: I transferred to Tandem part way through my 10th grade year. I just was so bored and uninspired at Monticello, and I was walking across the street every day to Tandem, after school to hang out with Phoebe (Schuyler '16) cause she and I became friends in middle school and were really close friends. And so my mom would pick me up every day from Tandem pretty much anyway, and then Ali (Abdel-Rahman '16), who I was friends with from Monticello, had transferred a year before me, he was like “why don’t you just go here? Like you should just go here” and I was like “yeah, yeah I should.” So I applied and I got in, and we were waiting to hear about financial aid and we got it, and I remember my mom texted me while I was at school and was like “we got it! You can go to Tandem!” I was so excited and I told all my friends at Monticello that I was transferring to Tandem so that I could ‘focus on my music’ which is so funny cause, I mean, maybe I thought that was true, but I don’t know, that seems like a really serious thing to say for a high schooler, I guess.

So I started going to Tandem. I still think of 10th grade as one of the best years of my life. It was so fun and exciting and I loved everyone, all the kids and the teachers. Some of the memories that stick out the most to me are like Spring Day obviously was so awesome to me. 

There was one day, I think this was senior year or maybe junior year, where some of the teachers gave Phoebe and Carson and maybe Eli or somebody else, some money to go down the street to buy a new couch for the senior lounge from Goodwill. So we took Pheobe’s dad’s truck and drove to Goodwill and bought this couch that had a pull-out bed, and we brought it back, and it was a secret that it was a pull-out bed. The next day we pulled out the bed and we were all piled on the bed and a teacher came in and they were like, “mm mm no, that’s not gonna work.” 

My memories from Tandem are a lot of antics, just like getting up to a lot of really ridiculous, fun stuff. That doesn’t sound like it would be really important, but it was just such a fun and inspiring part of my life, and it was important that there was sort of like this absurdity. There were so many things that were kind of ridiculous about it and it’s cool talking to you because I feel like it’s hard to explain Tandem to people who didn’t go there.

There was Nura—oh my god, I haven’t said her name in so long it feels wrong kind of—she had a poetry class one year that I took. Do you remember her office upstairs in the main building? It was like in there and it just, I don’t know how to describe it but I have this really strong feeling associated with Tandem that’s kind of hard to describe. 

Kate performing for Tandemonium at Cville Coffee in 2014

KB: That’s so nice. It’s funny seeing that because I’ve had that experience and had that experience a lot when I was younger. Older girls are like the coolest thing that could ever exist when you’re a young girl. You don’t think that other people are having that experience, too, when you’re older than them.

It is funny to remember that there are people I don’t know who are listening and hearing the songs. It’s kind of easy for me to forget about that sometimes, and that makes it easier for me to just share things without feeling self-conscious about it. But I think it can also at times make what I’m doing feel really self-centered because I have no way of seeing if my music is having an impact on anyone. So I don’t know, I guess it’s kind of a good thing and a bad thing that I don’t really see the response. It’s weird with social media. It can feel like when you’re releasing something that nothing is happening in real life. 

I got a P.O. box and I’m making this songbook zine thing. I’m working with a designer right now to finish the book and then we’re gonna get it printed. And there’s a song on the album called “Postcard from a Cloud,” and in that chapter I’m gonna have my P.O. box and tell people that they can send me letters if they want to. And that to me feels like I really want to be connected to people, but I want it to be in a more tangible way than just a DM or something, so I’m gonna try to do that and see how it goes.

KB: Definitely, like some people will talk to me when I’m at the merch table and that’s really nice. It is kind of like I go the whole year without knowing—seeing numbers and knowing that people are listening—but not knowing who they are, so it’s nice to talk to people.

It is weird cause the more people who are listening online, I don’t really feel–like nothing is different with me—you know what I mean? So it’s weird.

KB: When I was in high school, I was just recording stuff on Garage Band and making those really kind of simple recordings and uploading them to Soundcloud and Band Camp, and then I met this guy John at UVA who was recording other local artists and bands, and he started recording me. We made this EP, this like two-song thing. I think that was the first song that I ever put on Spotify. And from there, he and I were just making tons of stuff together, and I was releasing it under my name. In retrospect, I’m like that was a band pretty much, or not a band, it was like a duo project because we were writing a lot of stuff together. 

I feel like I tried everything over the last 5 years, and now I’m kind of starting to figure out what feels, what is natural to me, I guess. The stuff that I’m writing now, obviously it doesn’t have the same moodiness, cause I was a teenager. But the stuff that I’m making now feels in some ways like my early stuff–just guitar, vocals, and I’m recording on Garage Band again. 

At some point I want to not work with a producer. I just want to work with an engineer or try to record myself and just put out some more sort of primitive recordings. Some of the songs on the record that are like that, “Lonely” for example, feel a little bit more true to me or something with the minimal production.

KB: Obviously, I am constantly working on stuff, but I do feel like with a lot of the Spotify stuff there’s a certain amount of luck and timing involved. I started releasing songs on Spotify, and then the stuff that I was making with John that was a little bit more like pop and beat driven, that music started to have more traction on the internet than my singer-songwriter material and it started to take off a little bit more. 

I think in 2019, I got an email from these managers, these guys Eric and Tony, and we started talking over the internet. They were based in L.A., and they started managing me and then over the next few years we kind of assembled a team of people together, and, eventually, a couple years ago, got a record deal when I was living in Richmond. 

Having a label definitely made the transition a lot easier just from a funding perspective. There was less of a dire need to find an adult job or something. And that sort of gave me this confidence that I could be doing music. But I definitely had a lot of doubts at times. Now, I feel like I’m falling in love with making music again and I’m doing it on my own, like I’m just recording on Garage Band and it’s been so fun. But for years I was feeling really bogged down by the music industry side of things and the business stuff. All the stuff that’s not really actually related to songwriting or music at all. 

And then also I’ve had doubts because I’m also so much more of a songwriter than a performer. I like writing songs and I really like working on projects, and I like making this book and conceptualizing music videos, and assembling a group of people that I know to do different things for the video, and shooting the video, and editing. I love doing all of that stuff, but I don’t like some of what comes with being a public-facing musician. So, I don’t know. 

But at the same time I haven’t felt enough doubt—I feel like the music industry is so, kind of, unpredictable. I was listening to this one interview with Liz Phair, and I think Snail Mail. And Liz was saying with touring if you’re getting opportunities to tour, you just have to do them because your music career is like a huge truck and when it stops going it’s really hard to get it to start again. So I’ve kind of had that in the back of my mind when I’ve had doubts, like at some point I’m not even gonna have the option to be like “maybe I’m not going to do this.” I just need to keep going with it and figure out what I want kind of along the way.

I will say, that’s what I love doing, and I feel so lucky and grateful that that’s what I get to do so I wouldn’t want to paint the wrong picture about it. I feel so grateful to be doing this.

KB: In high school I would make a song and I would upload it to the internet immediately with like no time in between. And I kind of continued to do that, after I met John; we would make something and I would just put it out immediately, kind of without giving it a second thought. 

With the album, it took longer to make and so I’ve had to sit on things. I’ve had to make decisions I guess, more intentionally, and so it feels like something that I’ll like for a longer period of time because of that. I think the whole process has felt more intentional, and it feels like a more realized thing than some of my previous stuff which feels a little bit more stream of consciousness. 

I wrote this recently for another interview that I was writing answers to, and I think it’s true: the album feels like it represents a longer period of my life, whereas the previous things I put out, like the singles and the EPs, feel like tiny moments in my life.

I am really happy with how it turned out, and I think it is the kind of album I wanted to make.  My idea going into it was that it would kind of feel like a mixtape, like a mixtape you would make for your friend, or like a playlist now, lots of different genres, and styles, and eras, and whatever. That was sort of what I wanted to do, and I feel like it’s turned out that way.

KB: I mean it feels like a core part of who I am, definitely. 

Some people, I feel like they can remember full scenes in their head, and I’m not that way at all. It’s like a kind of foggy image and then a feeling. A lot of my memories of Tandem are kind of that way. I’m like looking at an image with a veil over it or something but it feels–it’s like this whimsical dream in my memory. It was so special and I’m such a nostalgic person, so I feel really sentimental about it.

After the release of her debut album, Songs From A Thousand Frames of Mind, in late September, Kate headed out on tour with her band. One of her early venues was in Charlottesville. 

The Southern, Charlottesville—The show is crawling with Tandemites. Kate looks out at the crowd on stage and muses that this feels like a high school, college, and family reunion rolled into one. I’m standing near the back next to a group of older women who seem to be having a blast. At one point, Kate has to restart a song, because she could hear her mom’s voice and it threw her off. Watching Kate now, hearing her again live, I remember the feeling of watching her years before, the tender, sweetness of her voice that sends out this sense of comfort and warmth. 

But I also see for the first time, I think I see her clearer now, without the haze of young girl mania and fascination. I see her discomfort being on stage, performing. I see the Kate who would rather be writing songs and making art with her friends. The Kate who is holding on and trying to figure out what she wants along the way. 

Still, being in this room full of love and community, I’m grateful to her for bringing us together in this way. Her voice brought us to this room, to find one another again, to dance, to be moved, to remember.