The first thing you notice when you meet Cat Terrones is her laid back persona, how tall she is, and her long blond hair. But when you see her perform you are quickly aware of how her voice fills the room literally, outshining her Taylor Acoustic Guitar. Even more surprising is how the depth of her songs are even fuller than her voice. Recognized for her songwriting in such contests as Kerrville New Folk, Rocky Mountain Folk Festival Singer-Songwriter Competition, and LEAF New Song Contest, Cat is an amazing storyteller. Beyond that, there are only a two writers in my lifetime I’ve had the experience of listening to live which had the gift of reaching somewhere in your soul that you didn’t even know existed. The first was Dar Williams. The second was Cat Terrones. It’s something you can’t explain. You just have to see her live.

Where did you grow up and where do you call home now?

I grew up, and still live in a small coastal town within the regions of occupied Tovaangar territory and the homelands of the Gabrielino-Tongva people. In what is commonly known as San Pedro, Los Angeles, CA.

How have the life experiences of where you lived affected your songwriting or the songs you choose to record?

I feel that two major treads come together for me, my awareness or attempt to understand who I am and how I got here, as a settler-colonist and descendent of those settlers, and more recent immigrants. And the other thread that comes in, is longing for, or even missing a connection to home, a connection to earth, and I was taught that nature, land, music, story, and poetry was a vehicle for that, through growing up attending a very unusual cultural church in Los Angeles, The Welsh Presbyterian Church. And from the time I was eight to twenty-one years old, getting a weekly lesson in Welsh-Celtic identity, mostly through music and community. I was born in this strange place that none of my ancestors are really from, and how they got here comes with a lot of hardship for themselves many times, and harm to others collectively. It’s a weird place to end up, in this beautiful land, and it’s all I know, and this culture we are living right now is an over culture. But then very early, it starts to not become all I know. So I started looking to contemporary music as a teenager, and also then Irish music (of which I have more recent heritage even than Welsh) and attempting to learn how or why we tell stories, and connect spiritually to places we may have never been, or long to know or feel part of. I cleaned early on, probably very subconsciously that music is a way to express longing for people, places, times, you miss, or have lost, or maybe even have never really known…but I think there’s a magic there, in that longing too. Something really valuable to explore when done in a conscious way. And that song and singing, and music is a way to bring our hearts together, to fully expand, and connect to ourselves and others. I learned that from the Welsh folks too. And it made utter sense to little young me…who just loved music and singing and what a serendipity that my family had gotten involved with this group that connects to their culture as well as their spirit through song, harmony, proud choral traditions, ancient poetry and cultural language, and music. I look back and know that was such a unique thing and such a gift.

What artists/songwriters have impacted or influenced your work the most?

Sinead O’ Connor was the first singer-songwriter I became aware of, at maybe twelve years old, her big hit with Prince came out. I somehow got my hands on her album, and used to listen to it a lot. I’d sit under my stereo and listen to the whole ting, and sing with it. I put it on to listen and go to sleep with. Odd thing maybe, she’s not the most cheery for a twelve year old. These not a T Swift. But I remember still very vividly one day, after listening quite a bit, maybe months, I don’t really know, thinking “I want to do THAT”. I didn’t know at the time ‘that’ was being an artist and a singer and a songwriter. I figured out the finer details with Tori Amos, and Joni Mitchell, going back into her catalogue because of an article in maybe Rolling Stone where Slash was being interview about greatest albums of all time, and he said Joni Mitchells Blue, get yourself a copy and listen to that. Something about who that was coming from, seemed strange enough to take notice. I did and went down the Joni rabbit hole. And then Irish traditional songs influenced me a lot, and then my Welsh melodic exposure to Welsh Celtic styles of melody and harmony. There’s a lot of people PJ Harvey. None of these folks do I think I’m actually writing like, but I love them and heard the intensity and honestly, and creativity, and power, and center they held for themselves and others. That was very aspirational, and inspiring, and I felt like I could expand my little normal self in a really wonderful way in music…like it was a gorgeous cavernous space to let myself unfold within. Sometimes that’s been scary and intimidating, sometimes, undeniable, and inevitable, and the most wonderful. I just loved that you could create worlds in songs, and tell stories, and hold all these emotions that in daily life there didn’t seem a place for, or to express. In music there was that space.

I came here for two things, to be loved and to sing.

Cat Terrones – from the song “Two Things”

When you perform, what do you hope is your audience’s biggest takeaway?

That we are connected to all things around us, and to find some comfort in this life, to feel seen because you recognize yourself in someone else’s story. So that process of circular, connective empathy. I always wanted to transport people a bit, to another world, or shift perspective on ‘reality’ to open up some space for our souls, and for nature, and maybe a shift in the narrative, to inhabit our consciousness a bit more freely. To not feel so alone or isolated. I think music helped me feel less alone, any time I listened or sang along to music I liked, and to feel so seen when I saw a performer whom I connected with their music. I first heard an indigenous spiritual visionary, named Woman Stands Shinning, Pat McCabe, speak online a few years ago, and she started talking about songs being ‘a different way of knowing’ and from so many contexts this is so true, and from hearing her say that whew it was the encapsulation about what I love about song. From that moment on I just reference her saying that “songs are a different way of knowing” and she also talks about healing processes are sometimes a whole community ‘singing the truth back into a person so that the lie cannot inhabit anymore…the same space as that truth’. I’m exploring my expression, and my truth, and my intuitive knowing, and emotions in songs. So I very humbly hope that some little seed of that process happens to shift my own perspective, or sing some truth or breathe space back into me, and if it can do that, many times it has wings of others too. I hope that then happens for people through any music I make, or perform or participate in. It’s the little seed I carry around, and plant when I write songs about whatever I feel or is comming through, and hope that intention that also comes through when of if they come to a place where I’m sharing them.

Tell me a little bit about your latest project?

My latest project is named “Bright and Far Away”. It’s an EP I release in February of this year 2024. The treatment was pretty simple, I just felt compelled to get these down, I worked with a recording engineer, and friend in town here in L.A. and we did this kind of bedroom recording. I love these songs so much. They have healed me in both the writing, and sharing them through performing. It’s been very gratifying to have them exist in an album format. Incidentally, two songs from this EP ‘Before the Spark’and ‘Josephine’ just got me invited to perform in the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival Singer-Songwriter competition happening this August 2024. So I’ve nicknamed her “the little EP that could” right now…very sweet to have some recognition around these songs.

What was different or unique about your approach to this last project as compared to previous ones?

This EP was honestly literally to record the songs, to have them on ‘record’ in the most literal sense and in a way spiritually. I felt I needed a recording of them. But they were songs that all spoke honestly to transition and change, many of them were inspired by various prompts of considering my own mortality, or the general nature of impermanence, death, and dying. One was about a person I lost in our community, and also in that same song about another person who was tragically lost that I never met. But their two stories wove together in my own experience to become the song ‘Josephine’. So, perhaps appropriately, it’s a grieving record, but I don’t think it comes off that way necessarily in the first listen. The songs tended to my heart, and were more about trying to still feel anchored in the world, and in the beauty here, when experiencing a lot of emotional, or even physical pain sometimes. These songs gave my soul an anchor in some stormy weather over the past few years. And so it felt important to not pretty that up, or fancy it up too much. Get out of the way, just let the song be a song. Just let my voice be a voice. And although I’m not sure my producer/engineer would agree, I tried to get out of my own way as much as possible. And since we were new to working together, I can confirm, that I managed, most of the time to do that. The few times it seemed like I wasn’t, were actually because we needed to retract some vocals, as I’d not yet fully landed in my performing the song because of how emotionally challenging the content was. So it was a really beautiful experience to have the hold up, not fully know why. Then have the adjustment to the way I was performing the song, get to perform it live, which I’d never done, then come back and rerecord the vocals. so there was an organic nature, I’ve also been going through lots of personal changes the past two years, and was slowly working on the tracks through that time. I can hear where I was on the first track we made, and on the last. It’s a cool thing for me to hear that journey in the recording. To know I was also taking a big journey and to have some grace for myself and also to be proud of how I even opened up creatively in the recording process over time. That’s like the dream right. If you start out one way, and take this journey and at the end are exactly the same…your’e doing it prly wrong. And the microcosm of that is making an album or even recording one track, and the macro is our lives. Expecting it’s all going to be cookie cutter is like, why? I’m just over it. Who’s got time for it? We’re only here for such a short time. So I think the subject matter of the record, allowed me to let go, just enough, to get this blessed little EP of songs that could…out to the world.

Was there ever a time you felt like you wanted to quit making music?

I’ll be honest, yes, many, many times. Maybe not writing, but sharing and performing music, or trying to have a career, sure. Honestly, literally there are songs on this album that were messages from my spirit, to me, that were like….’ohhh not so fast…’ and trying to teach me over and over. To ‘sing the truth back into me’ about what is important about music in general and why I love it, and maybe need to keep making it. And also some of the strange experiences I’ve had sharing songs, that get really incredibly intuitive receptions from people. I just love that I can write something that is so distinctly about my experiences or at least emotional experiences and tumble it around in my own imagination, and still have others connect and understand and love the songs I write. This EP of songs were my anchors, and so, yeah the music teaches me, and teaches me to show up even when I don’t want to or think it can’t matter. If you’re not selling at certain levels, or making certain kinds of music, or of a certain age range, it can be hard to feel like it matters. And I think that’s so wrong. If anything is wrong, that’s just not the spiritual truth of making music. Everyone songs are so beautiful, and all of us can sit down and write 100 different songs about a cactus or something, and they’ll be beautiful, or weird, or funny, or sad, or cathartic, or encapsulate some ephemeral energy of the cactus in nature, and so on…that’s where the song “Before the Spark’ kind of keeps me anchored …there are so many songs, so many voices, and lets just marvel that we get to be here and participate in this incredible multitude of songs that is life…and music! It can either be daunting or wonderful…sometimes both. Just add yours in, contribute, let the beauty come through, or the terror, or the humor, or all of it! Whatever the energy is for the song. A favorite songwriter and teacher I’ve had the great fortune to sit at the feet of many times, Mary Gauthier, has been know to say on occasion, ‘singer-songwriters are an endangered species…’ and I try and take that in, and hear what she’s saying. I think what she means is ‘singer-songwriters’ being the people who are really trying to talk to the soul of he listener, via an accepted cultural format (the song), about our souls, the soul of the Earth, about our hearts, humanity, about life, beauty, love, justice, or injustice, and a singer-songwriter, is trying to do it, with at the very least some personal integrity and honesty, and if we’re lucky some beauty and awareness of craft. Or as my pal and fellow singer-songwriter, Korby Lenker, liked to say with a smile when we’d be in late night song circles with a dozen completely wonderful and successful but un-famous songwriters…of a certain age…”We’re Lifers.” We’re not backing out now. These tunes on my EP speak to that part of me that has just always wanted to be the artist and the singer-songwriter, since 12 years old on my brown shag rug, under the radio on my bookcase, replaying Sinead’s CD start to finish over and over, hearing this pull kind of speak within “I want to do THAT”. So I’m trying to give that inner artist some space, and let her be at large in the world, a bit feral if she likes, but making music.

Coffee burned strong like the warm skin of Summer. Pallets piled high too many walls to number. Bandanas 3 for 5 at the Texaco Station. Buy the kids fresh pomegrant and the seeds stain their smiling faces.

Cat Terrones, from the song “Camino”

What is your funniest or favorite “on the road” story when touring?

Performing at a Festival in Asheville area, we’d had a really long day, were hanging out in a picnic area, near the artists quarters, and these two ‘skater kids’ for lack of a better description, came up offering giant pieces of cake. Texas toast, double scoop sized, giant pieces. Asking me and my bandmate if we wanted cake. We said sure, since we hadn’t eaten in hours and they seemed kind of entertaining. The two kids, maybe 10 or 11 years old, launch into a story about how they acquired these hulking pieces of (now we’re dinging in – no utensils available) very tasty cake. Apparently we were eating stolen cake, from a camp next to theirs, from a man who had, yelled at them by their telling, uncontrollably for, what I think we both assumed was probably a disturbance of the camp peace. And, the man, described colorfully by the kids, had also attempted ‘run them down’ with his bicycle….ok a little disturbing. We keep eating cake. The kids keep talking and telling us stories, and I have no idea why they kept chatting but I think because we found them amusing, they felt buoyed by the laughter and genuine concern and listening to the regaling story. It was a very lighthearted moment, punctuated by some pretty low morale that had proceeded it, cooold weather, raining, no food, apres-show, and now what do we do…and these kids show up offering ridiculously rich, very good, pilfered buttercream. Also I have no idea how they were riding skateboards at the grounds which were predominantly not paved. We were a little worried that we’d be caught with the cake, expressed that concern we’d be accosted by the same easily angered and possibly retaliatory camp goer, and quickly finished our pieces. The kids ran off to make more excitement for themselves. I am utterly convinced that at no time were we being lied to nor was our cake tampered with in any way. These kids had the genuinely most rambunctious and wholeheartedly honest manner. Perhaps we were tricked? But we never knew. And at that moment, that folk festival, without the marauding, cake-stealing, peace disturbing, seemingly generous and comedically savvy skater kids…it would have been a lot less entertaining.

Who or what keeps you grounded the most?

Well, what first comes to mind is my pup. So he’s definitely a being who is so loving, and keeps me grounded and in the moment, or I should say, brings me back to the present frequently. Also, the organic truth that I am nature, in my own body and consciousness. As well as nature around us, trees, especially mature trees or forests, and the ocean, rivers sometimes. Breathing consciously. And singing I actually find very grounding, making sound, chanting and practices I’ve learned with sound or breath. I feel like singing or chanting is the reminder that we are vibration, and made of energy, and it’s fun to play with, but it also can be very healing, mediative and grounding. As I say that..I definitely need to be chanting more!

What advice would you give artists just starting out?

Be kind to yourself, and invest in what you love about music. Keep moving forward, and celebrate every little thing you do, over time it will add up and you will grow and change and mature as a creator, let yourself do that! And keep going, because the over culture does not want us free, or expressive, or honest and feeling our feelings, or sensations, our ‘truth’, but as humans we need that. And we need formats to share that, face to face, as well as virtually. We need you. Keep being truthful and try to be kind when and where you can. Figure out you ‘seed’ what you want to seed your music and intuition with. Whatever healing, or change-making that might entail…figure out a little bigger purpose than just yourself or basic self-promotion, but really understand early what you love and why you participate and make art or story, or music. It will help you when things are confusing or hard. Make friends, and enjoy your artistic circles, as well as the wider community who enjoy and support music or writing or art. Be in the world. ‘Serve the music’ and Share what you have to share. Trust that it’s going to connect where it needs to for you and others.

Listen to Cat Terrones and other Artists You Should Know on our Spotify Playlist.