Katy Kirby has released my favorite album of 2021 so far with "Cool Dry Place." It is hard for me to overstate how much I love this album. And even harder to overstate my love for the song " Portals," a song I memorized all of the words to so that I could sing it with more feeling, a thing I don't think I've done since Lucy Dacus' "Nightshift" or possibly something off "Pinkerton" when I was 14 years old.
For this interview I asked if Katy could bring her guitar so we could hear some songs and dive into them. And we dove almost immediately into territories reserved for old friends like God and childhood friends. Katy talked about being home-schooled in Texas, and the support group that she had from youth group. "We should still have a thing where we all get together and sing," she says without realizing that she's in a band that does exactly that, even if it's not happening right now.
Throughout this set she plays "Tap Twice," and we get into the agreed upon best line of the album, "yeah, we're cut on the knuckles, but at least we're open wide" before she pours into a delicate version of "Portals." And she closes with "Cool Dry Place" before getting into a surgical examination of Gillian Welch's "April the 14th pt. 1," a song that she "rages" to and that tells a historical coincidence of several events that happen on April 14, though somehow it leaves out the birth of Katy Kirby, born in Houston on that sacred day.