Cole’s influences are all hinted at in her sweet Americana sounds. She grew up listening to and studying the greats!

“I grew up listening to The Beatles, a lot of soul music, a lot of Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder and that sort of ilk, because I love great singers and gospel vocals and horn sections and piano-based music,” she explained. “I grew up listening to Zeppelin. It was a very wide scope of music because my mom was a huge music lover. I was listening to Hendrix, and Joni Mitchell, Janis, and those sorts of people. I got very broad strokes of singers and great songwriters. I was always leaning towards stronger vocalists who use more of their range in different ways. I always loved the stories behind the songs.“

As for how Katie would describe her sound for folks initiated by her music?

“My music is blending in with Jason Isbell or Brandi Carlile; this is where I’m going, where I’m allowed to sing songs that are meant to have a standing or allowed to put gospel vocals in the middle of the song and it will sort of work,” she says. “I feel like there is a lot more freedom within that genre to do what I want to do musically and as a storyteller. I always found songs about artists and everything else. Tell me a good story and write me a good song and I’ll be a fan. I’m not completely loyal to artists. Just because I loved them once, doesn’t mean I love them now. Wherever the best songs are, that’s where I’m going.“

Cole was asked about some of the things she does to stay busy when not working for Smashing Pumpkins. Damn, this gal sure does stay busy!

“I wanted to preface by saying that I do a lot of charity work to give back and one of my regular charity gigs is to play hospitals around Nashville with a program called Musicians On Call,” she says. “That is super rewarding and my favorite in that situation is visiting long-term care facilities with older patients that don’t get a lot of visitors.”

Some people collaborate with other artists in their genre. Others branch out and do unlikely pairings. Yet others collaborate with incarcerated men. Wait? What? Yup?

“When one of my good friends and co-writers reached out to me about doing this project, they work directly with inmates to write songs and to me, it’s about helping them reform and rehabilitate and just giving them the focus and something to look forward to, something to work towards when they get out of prison,” she explains. “As soon as I heard about the program, I was in. I’m always out for working with people and sharing music with people that really need it. It’s super important, and hearing these stories from these inmates was absolutely devastating. I worked directly with an inmate who told me his life story, pretty much from age four to his current age which was only 21 and he’s behind bars, but you could see that one-off decision and this one bad move and bad luck and bad circumstances and he’s behind bars, all leading up to where he is now and he sees where he’s at and he wants to make a change. Writing a song with him sort of helps express where he’s at, where he wants to go, some of his remorse, and looking back at people who have inspired him. It was an unbelievable experience; I don’t really have words for it. It was eye-opening and life-changing.

Every Tuesday, Cole releases a new cover song on social media, appropriately titled Tunesday! How the heck does she find time to record these with her busy ‘day job’?

“I’ve been brought in like backstage or recorded in a hotel room. Sometimes I do them backstage at the venue. Sometimes I do them in hotels. I try to keep my YouTube thing going, but I know, for instance, I have five songs on my current EP and there are only so many people that you can directly throw these five songs in people’s faces and beg, ‘Listen to my music! It’s amazing!’ People will start to lose their minds,” she concedes. “I have a new video so that’s the thing I’ve been pushing the most. I also know that people crave new content. We like to hear new renditions of songs that we really love. It doesn’t take me long to learn a new song and if I can share a couple of minutes of the song on the road to share whatever I do with people and it’s just another insight aside from being a touring musician, I’m also a singer/songwriter and here’s the song that I love. I love to share with people. I’m still doing that on the road.”

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