Katie Herzig + Butterfly Boucher
Katie Herzig -
Soon after finishing her acclaimed 2008 album ‘Apple Tree,’ Colorado-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Katie Herzig received a fateful phone call. “I sat down to paint one day—I hadn’t painted in years—then I got a call asking me to write a song for the Sex and the City movie,” she says. “So I put down my paintbrush and haven’t painted since!”
What she did instead, as one assignment led to another, was write music for numerous films and television shows, and in the process, find a surprising and exciting direction for her new album, ‘The Waking Sleep’, her first release on Downtown/Mercer Street Records. “I was trying new things,” says Herzig, “getting outside of what I would normally do as an artist. It was really fun and invigorating to use samples and build tracks digitally. I loved creating like that, and it really allowed me more freedom, because I was doing something less personal, and creating for something else.”
Butterfly Boucher -
“This is a new era for me, being independent and calling my own shots,”says Butterfly Boucher of her self-titled album out April 10th. Originally signed to the now-defunct but once mighty A&M records, her ‘03 debut ‘Flutterby’ drew notable mentions from David Bowie, Madonna, Ben Folds and Sarah McLachlan. But Boucher was caught up in the decade’s label maelstrom, and was unable to release her second album until 09. Now, as not only a performing artist, but also a multi-instrumentalist, writer, arranger, and producer – she’s funneled her multiple creative outlets into the making of Butterfly Boucher with an adventurous and experimental spirit, crafting smart indie-pop with alt rock muscle.
Boucher’s work with others fed the sound of the new record. Immutable in her need to be more than a solo artist, she spent 2011 producing fellow Aussie Missy Higgins forthcoming album, touring as a bass player and vocalist with McLachlan, and working with a new pop trio Elle Macho. “Everything broadened when I allowed myself to go beyond my solo music, collaborating with others has been key to keeping my own creativity bubbling as well as my sanity.”