Movies can help us dream. They can show us a world of possibilities or places long gone or places that never were. For singer/songwriter Kat Edmonson, the sounds and images of glamorous old Hollywood movies set her life in motion when she was just a child. They led her to develop her unique and engaging manner of singing and songwriting, a style that she calls “vintage pop.”
Edmonson performs in a voice that combines the light, lilting quality of Blossom Dearie, the emotional edge of Billie Holiday, and slight twang of Emmylou Harris. Many people may recognize her from her film debut, singing on-camera as the nightclub performer in Woody Allen’s Café Society. The title—and content—of her new album, Old Fashioned Gal (2017), wonderfully sums up Edmonson’s approach to her art and her life.
Edmonson spent her childhood in Houston, the only child of a single mother. Her mother sat young Katherine in front of a television playing videotapes of classic Hollywood musicals as she worked long hours. Kat connected with the music she saw and heard on her screen in what must have seemed like private performances.
“I began to understand that there was this art form in which people sang, acted, and danced,” Edmonson says from her home in New York City. “I just assumed that was what I was going to do. It was inevitable that I found this path where I’ve started makin
