Katie Pruitt (2024)

One Liner:  Quasi-country singer with a great voice and no fear about tough subjects

Wikipedia Genre:  Americana, alternative country, alternative rock, folk, pop

Home: Nashville

Poster Position: 18
Both Weekends.
Friday at 1:40.

Miller Lite Stage.

Thoughts:  I forget why I already know of her, but she has some truly freaking great songs.  I put one on a mix I made for my son not that long ago, and as we listened to it driving from Auburn, Alabama to Knoxville, Tennessee, I was enamored with it all over again.  Oh, haha.  Yeah, I know of her because she was here in 2021.  Dummy.  How else would I know about a low key artist like this?

I reviewed her 2020 album in the midst of the pandemic lockdown.

"Katie Pruitt - Expectations.  Read about her in some sort of Who's Next! article about up and coming artists, and after giving her top single a shot I liked it well enough to try out the whole album.  Pretty good - you'd call it county, but not in the same way that most of country music sounds.  More like the Taylor Swift-ian, ballad love-song type of Country, or the alternative-country stuff of Kacey Musgraves, or the soft-blues of John Mayer at times (see "Expectations").  Hell, I hear Miley Cyrus in "My Mind's a Ship That's Going Down."  She can crank it with her voice, like on the album closer "It's Always Been You," and she has some confessional tunes like "Loving Her," a pretty tune about being nervous to use a girl's name in a song for fear that people would figure out that she was gay.  I thought "Grace Has a Gun" was going to be the top track here - its got a great set of lyrics and a haunting wooooaahhhh of a chorus that sticks in my head.  But instead, it was "Out of the Blue" that tops the stream count with 1.4 million. [now up to 12 million in 2024]

Another one with John Mayer-esque guitar licks and sound.  And otherwise, just a nice little love song.  This album has been a welcome surprise.  I find myself singing along to little snippets of it when I'm wandering around the house or walking the dog.  Has catchy little bits and a great voice, I like it."

Cool!  In 2017, she was awarded something called the Buddy Holly Prize from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.  That certainly sounds badass.  "The Holly Prize is an award made possible by Songmasters and administered and juried by the SHOF as a tribute to the legacy of SHOF inductee Buddy Holly. Since 2010, the Holly Prize annually recognizes and supports a new “all-in-one songwriter “— an exceptionally talented and inspired young musician/singer /songwriter whose work exhibits the qualities of Holly’s music: true, great and original."  Past winners don't ring many bells, but I've heard of Ben Howard and Sylvan Esso!

Since that first album, she released a new one on April 5, 2024 called Mantras.  It opens up with a more rock type sound with the guitar forward "All My Friends," but then sounds a lot like that prior album of well-written Americana and folk rock tunes.  Her voice is so nice.  The top track is "White Lies, White Jesus, and You," with 345k streams.

Powerful song and video, with strong autobiographical touches about her struggles with herself and organized religion's role in her life, after growing up gay in the Catholic church.  She was raised in the Atlanta area, and then moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University.  Her music often deals with tough issues - questioning religion, sexual orientation, or mental health - and she cites Brandi Carlile as an inspiration to her honesty.

I'd 100% go check her out.