Life & Work with Kate McCandless of SHE SPEAKS IN TONGUES

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kate McCandless of SHE SPEAKS IN TONGUES.

Hi Kate, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in Northern California and came to Chicago for college, where I studied Theatre and Creative Writing. I was primarily an actor and director but struggled to resonate with the traditional path of those art forms. After performing with a performance collective in Chicago called Parker, I began to feel my craving to sing and create a rock n roll band/music platform that allowed me to express all the angst surrounding feminism and women’s stories. I could piece together a band, and SHE SPEAKS IN TONGUES was born. I was influenced by growing up in the church and Christian spirituality – the kind of wild prophet in the desert vibe – shoving their finger at the world and shedding light on injustice. I donned a burlap sack dress I found in the basement of an old church and discovered the looping pedal, which empowered me as a vocalist. I created my first performance/album, Gloria, GUITAR, to highlight how patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism appear in rock n roll history and today.

Each song is an imagined story of a different woman musician based on my research, curiosity, and general nerdery. I don’t know how reference ended up playing a role in my work, but I like to play with existing music material and nostalgia a lot to lure and then dismantle and submit a new narrative. It started as a symbolic reclamation of the agency. Nostalgia is fascinating to me. It’s one of the most pleasurable and dangerous forces out there. Its comfort can be blinding and perpetuate harm, and I’m obsessed with that. After having my first and only child with my husband Adrian (original drummer of SSIT), I began writing my second project/album DOMESTIKA which samples Bjork music and lyrics and weaves them together live with purely voice and loops. It started as an exercise in extracting all the feminist themes I could find in Bjork’s body of work after reading that Bjork didn’t identify with feminism. Then her album Vulnicura came out, detailing her divorce and heartbreak. She began talking more openly about feminism and her experiences as a woman in music, where she was belittled or not given proper credit for her work. As I began to show up to practice for DOMESTIKA (my postpartum album), it became a space for me to process my relationship with motherhood, marriage, family, and domesticity. It became my bloody Valentine to Motherhood, which was a very challenging and traumatic threshold for me. The project was incredibly empowering and felt like an act of healing and channeling my own experience and that of my ancestors. I can’t put my finger on it, but some freaky vibes came through in some of those practices. I’m channeling in my work; the vocal loops can create a trance and build sound intensity. I also began studying Shamanism and Reiki, and my intuitive sensations made more sense. “Shamanic” is one way I would describe my work. DOMESTIKA was fraught with delays and obstacles in many ways. I think it tested my sense of self-sufficiency, and even though it seemed like a project that was not nearly as accessible and outwardly impressive as Gloria, GUITAR seemed to be. I still needed to move it forward. I got so fed up with so many false starts that I just threw up my hands and recorded the whole thing in one go, one song after the other in one day. The recordings you hear, except a few tracks created with Nigel Harsch, are just capturing me performing live in one take. Then the pandemic hit, and I just said the hell with it and released it even though it was never quite all that I imagined or “finished” yet in my mind. The reception was minimal. I mean, we had other priorities! So I just let it go and still hope to create a more formal performance of the work.

When the pandemic hit, my family and I decided to move to Kansas City to be closer to family and have a more easeful pace of life in a small city. I’m now settled in my new home, playing shows and connecting with musicians and artists. After the pandemic, I felt stuck creatively and needed a hefty dose of fun. So I reached out to Steve Tulipana (recordBar, miniBar, Lemonade Park), who from the get-go has been a big supporter of mine, and submitted an idea to do a performance of Patti Smith’s album Easter on Easter Sunday. I connected with Cody Wyoming, who has a natural talent for and a backlog of these shows. Easter went so well that we have other album performances starting with PJ Harvey’s To Bring You, My Love, this Summer at Lemonade Park. In a way, it’s just an opportunity to have fun and meet other musicians in Kansas City, a way to rekindle that creative spark in my work. I hope to gather some folks to develop a new job soon, which is exciting. I love this town and its people.

Alright, let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
Well, yes and no. Everything in the universe said Yes, and we got many opportunities. When I first formed SHE SPEAKS IN TONGUES, it was like wildfire. It was my first time creating a band and music, so it was all swift, fun, and satisfying. When I began my second project, DOMESTIKA, which was more of a solo project, it was fraught with delays and false starts, which took the wind out of my sails. I imagined finding a collaborator to add texture and beats, but it didn’t work out save a few tracks. In theatre, they say casting is 90%, and that’s true.

Finding the right people to work with who have the talent, personality, reliability, and who you can feel safe with creatively can be challenging. It feels like dating. But when it works, it feels effortless. I would say another struggle I have is feeling like I don’t have the “knowledge” or “skills” of a “musician,” I don’t create music in the traditional sense and don’t have access to the language of cords, measures, time signature, etc. But I’m learning that’s okay and that there are many ways to make music. The costume designer is supposed to be something other than the lighting designer. They work together to make the thing. The common language is the story you’re trying to tell together. At least, that’s what we say in the theatre. I feel like I need to do my work, and it’s usually best to find a comrade or two who are just as jazzed and geeky as I am about the thing. Kansas City has been hot and welcoming, and I’ve been pinching myself regarding the folks I’m meeting and getting to work with. It’s been very affirming after the long, arduous experience of creating a solo record, moving to a new city, and living through a pandemic.

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a singer, writer, and performing artist. I create music and performances under the name/container SHE SPEAKS IN TONGUES. I perform solo and in collaboration with other artists/musicians. I like to play with nostalgia and reference to highlight an issue – usually an issue of injustice, racism, sexism, etc. and explore feminist themes. My work has been described as a “rock n’ roll exorcism” (Sasha Geffen, 2015), which is pretty accurate. I put a shamanic intention into my work. It’s an exercise in channeling something from the ether from my ancestors, my subconscious, perhaps the collective, allowing me to voice some deeply embedded anger and pain. Still, I also shove my finger in the face of issues that are important to address. This kind of expression and theatricality sets my work apart from others. I certainly can get the room to shut up and pay attention anyway! I’m most proud that I did the thing. I pursued my dream, and it’s here, and I can share my work with others, hopefully empowering them to do the same.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
If I could choose one word to describe Kansas City, it would be “easy.” I spelled and said just that way. It just has a relaxed, easy vibe about it to me. They feel easy to get to food, culture, art, and nature with no stress. People seem warm, friendly, and hospitable here, too I can walk into a crowd at an event and start a conversation, and no one bats an eye, and I’ll make three new friends. What I like the least at the moment is the Kansas City football team’s name and the complicity in not changing it. It’s beyond unacceptable and deeply harmful, and it will take Kansas Citians to change that with their dollar and their voice. Our indigenous nations deserve better, as does our city, the land, and its people.

Contact Info:

• Website: shespeaksintongues.com
• Instagram: @she_speaks_in_tongues
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shespeaksintongues/
• Other: https://shespeaksintongues.bandcamp.com 

Image Credits
Marisa Klug-Morataya Mark Manning