Kat Says: “An Amtrac Live Set is Worth 12 Years, Two Weekends and a Flight to Atlanta”
Or; how my friends and I 'Came Along' on an 'Oddyssey' in our 'Extra Time.'
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Hey Friends!
Do you believe in astrology? Even if you don’t, you’ve probably heard of the dreaded Mercury Retrograde. It’s a common occurrence that plays out about three times a year when the physical planet Mercury appears to move backward in its orbit—not because it’s actually reversing in the sky, but because of the way Earth’s own orbit passes in relation to its little cousin.
It’s a time that’s said to be astrologically fraught with setbacks; not a great moment to make any big plans, mess around with technology or generally travel.
So of course its recent onset was the day I chose to take a quick, 15-hour trip to Atlanta via Spirit Airlines in order to catch a rare live set by Amtrac! To quote the Grammy-nominated producer’s second studio album, it was a true Oddysey—and to make it even more insane, it wasn’t even my first attempt.
My friends and I had actually driven 3.5 hours from Ft. Lauderdale to Orlando the weekend before and completely missed that first show, but we’ve been fans of Amtrac’s music for about 12 years, and he’s only played a handful or so live sets in all that time. Hell, it was nine years between his first and second full-length albums. If we were gonna do this, we had to do whatever it took.
And stars be damned, it was worth it!
If you’re not already an avid Amtrac fan, lemme shed some light.
I first heard of Amtrac in 2010, back when he was spelling his name with a “k,” like the train company. He’d played a set at Gainesville’s one-off Big And Hearty Festival, which I wasn’t even actually at because I was busy covering Electric Zoo in NYC for my nascent blog, Fresh Wet Paint (which you can read all about in my recent Ultra essay).
That trip was great. It was my first time seeing The Chemical Brothers and Flying Lotus, but when I got back, my friends were all talking about these new acts they’d become obsessed with. One was Big Gigantic. The other, Amtrac.
He had this three-song EP called Why? that mixed the synth-heavy edge of Digitalism and the bloghouse scene with a sort of post-punk and New Wave, vocal-driven dance-pop a la New Order. It was funky and gritty, but also fun and pretty and infectious, and while his style has matured in many ways, that’s really the sonic home that has come to define his prolific output.
A year later in September of 2011, he released his debut album Came Along. Its 13 tracks are colorful, danceable and covered in his own laidback vocals. He celebrated the release with a live set at Miami’s legendary (now-defunct) venue Grand Central, and I interviewed him for the first time after his set. (I tried to dig up a copy of the interview on the Wayback Machine, but I can’t find it, booo.)
In the nine years that followed, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Amtrac more times than I can truly count and for nearly every outlet I’ve worked for. I mean, a quick dig on Google shows that I once published two interviews with the dude in one month (August of 2015). LOL WUT? DID I ROB THE EDITORS?
Further Reading: Amtrac Talks Upcoming Album and Kentucky Roots, Premieres New Single ‘Hold On’ (Billboard Dance, August 2015)
Honestly, I’ve thought to myself at points, “Does this guy ever just hope it’s gonna be someone else on the phone?” But it’s great! Because I’ve been able to watch him blossom in truly inspiring ways, all while remaining enviably true to himself.
Born and bred in small-town Kentucky, the man behind the Amtrac moniker is an incredibly kind, very tall, former skateboarder named Caleb Cornett. Turns out he broke his entire right arm from the wrist to the elbow doing some kind of minor board flip, and that led to his pursuing beat production with a lot more gusto.
I’m not one to jump for joy over surgery (my own process of healing a dislocated knee has been anything but glorious), but I think the world got lucky on that one.
Since releasing Came Along, Amtrac has honed his sound into a really soulful, groovy signature. In that nine years between studio albums, he shared four stellar EPs; a bunch of singles, remixes and collaborations; and three mixtapes in a series called Hey There, Kiddo made of entirely original musical bits that never became finalized songs.
Yes. He’s released three, 45-minute mixtapes made of fire throwaways. F.I.R.E.
In 2013, he was tapped to play the opening slot of Kaskade’s Atmosphere arena tour. I reviewed that show for the Miami New Times, and I thought for sure this was the moment my underground fave was gonna blow onto the scene.
While it was certainly a huge look, it only seemed to inspire Amtrac to dig his heels deeper into club world. (I mean that in the sense that he began releasing even deeper house records, because the man Mr. Cornett has told me numerous times that he’s not really into going to clubs if he’s not the one doing the DJing).
During the next few years, he released increasingly smooth tunes on a smattering of highly respected house labels, including the spacey, double-sided “Undefeated/Primal” on Armada Music; and “Those Days,” a personal favorite of mine that samples Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish,” on Toolroom.
Then he released a totally sweet four-track EP called Lost in Motion on the new Super Music Group label; Super Music Group being the Miami-based management company he’s been signed to since day one. S/O those dudes. Big love.
Further Reading: Amtrac Stays on Course With ‘Lost in Motion’ (Insomniac, 2018)
Lost in Motion is one of my faves, because it’s got this song on it called “Darkest Sound” that my friends and I are super obsessed with. It also features his own original vocals. Here, just listen to it.
Anyway, Amtrac kept releasing some of the tightest tracks I’ve ever heard and carving a lane all his own, eventually going all in and founding a label in 2017. It’s called Openers, which I think is fucking great because it’s simultaneously both cocky and humble. It seems to wink at his status as an undercard while standing firm in its backing of his and his friends’ undeniable talent. My friend GPS has a bottle opener keychain from the label, and I just think that’s the best damn pun merch I’ve ever heard of, but I digress.
He launched the label with his EP 1987, but it was still two years until he dropped his long-awaited (by me, anyway) sophomore LP. It turns out it took him that whole decade to put Oddyssey together. It’s a patchwork quilt of sounds and moments of his life throughout that sprawling time, throughout his unfolding life and career, and his moves from Kentucky to Miami and eventually L.A.
Oddyssey, aptly named, is a sonic amalgamation of all Amtrac’s twists and turns. Unfortunately, it also dropped April 3 of 2020, 15 days after San Francisco became the first city in the United States to go on Covid lockdown—which means not a single club was truly operating upon its big reveal.
So. While Amtrac had spent a lot of time DJing since I’d seen that first live set in Miami in 2011, it took another year or two until he ever got back on a stage again. Even then, the Oddyssey tour only included four live sets in its whole run, and the gig in Miami was not one of those shows, much to my friends and I’s chagrin.
SO. When he followed that album up a mere two years and 10 months later with his third studio album Extra Time, I got pretty fuckin’ excited.
Extra Time feels like a true soul successor to Oddyssey’s fully-formed Amtrac sound. Both feature his vocals quite often; both showcase his collection of vintage, analog synths; and both are brimming with his love of ‘70s film scores (big, big Carpenter fan)—but Extra Time is the first record Mr. Cornett has made in a short window, the first that actually hones in on a conceptual moment in his own life.
It’s also the first to get a fully live tour attached to it, YAY!
So, we’ve come to the near-present moment, when my friends Lisa, Jose and I (you remember them? From the Printworks trip?) drove 3.5 hours to Orlando to catch Amtrac’s live set—the first the two of them would have ever seen in 12 years of fandom—only to miss the entire fucking thing because the ticket said doors opened at 6 p.m., but the venue website said door’s open at 10 p.m. and WHAT FUCKING CONCERT STARTS AT 6 P.M.????!!!!
Well, this one apparently.
Have you ever been so excited to see a show, like a decade’s worth of excitement, then been told while presenting your ID and proclaiming “We’re here to see Amtrac!” that “Oh no, that show already happened.” Lisa was *not pleased,* but I *have* been interviewing Amtrac for the past decade, and I *do* have his cell phone number.
Good guy Caleb saved the night and texted me back, inviting us to drink our sorrows away with a good-old-fashioned, college-town bar-hopping session. It was somewhere around mezcal number three that the trio of us decided “fuck it, we’re flying to the show next Saturday in Atlanta,” and that was that.
Mercury entered retrograde in the sign of Taurus at 4:35 a.m. ET, April 21. That day was actually pretty great for me. I ate my weight in light bites at the Las Olas Food and Wine Festival, and accidentally ran into my friends Jaime and Steven. What great luck! But by Saturday at noon when I was packing for our Spirit flight to ATL, things started to change.
First, our flight was delayed an hour. No biggie! More time to eat cookies in the Centurion lounge.
Once we boarded our plane, we were told it would be another 45 minutes until we could get off the ground because 1) Spirit was packing on extra bags from other flights onto ours, for some reason; and 2) there was only one working tarmac at the Ft. Lauderdale airport because of a once-in-1,000-years rain storm that drowned the whole fucking county the weekend before.
Okaaaay, but we did in fact get into the air at 4 p.m., and by 6 p.m., we were on the tarmac in Atlanta. BUT THEN we stayed there another hour because, as late as we were, there was no open gate for us to use and fuckin’ Delta didn’t wanna be helpful and welcome us into one of theirs. Thanks, Delta.
When we finally made it off the plane mostly unscathed (someone farted really bad right as we were allowed to deboard, LOL), we ran to the rental car counter and only then realized we’d booked the car incorrectly, which meant we had to wait in this long line for another 30 minutes or so. It was 7:30, and Amtrac was hitting the stage at 10. NOT AGAIN.
By 8, we were in a decent Nissan and Googling someplace to eat. We walked into a Zaxby’s, and the dude at the counter was like “We’re only taking online orders.”
“How do we do that?” Lisa asked, desperation creaking in her voice.
“I don’t know,” the man who *literally worked there* said.
“No!” Jose yelled. “No! We’re not doing this!” My motion to get gas station sandwiches was denied, and in the end, we all ate hateful Chik-fil-A sandwiches, which to my dismay, were actually rather good when ordered spicy. You win this round, Chik-fil-A.
We made it to the venue in plenty of time to enjoy the opening DJ Taradactyl’s set, which was fucking solid and included everything from Depeche Mode and New Order to the Chemical Brothers and a bunch of really great songs I tried to Shazam but I think got messed up because she was mixing, lol. Anyway, shout out DJ Taradactyl, she was really nice!
AND! We made it in time to drink mezcal in the green room with nice guy Caleb and watch his entire two-hour live show from epic start to beautiful finish.
We need to give this dude all the credit, because he’s out here setting up and tearing down his whole rig—including the lights, which he programmed—without even so much as a tour manager, let alone a team of roadies. Dude packs up and checks all those damn equipment suitcases by himself, and he drinks mezcal, and he makes his flights, so he’s basically a working-class hero.
It was definitely worth the headache. The show was awesome. The crowd was great, too, as only a crowd full of people who have waited 10 years to see something would. One guy next to me was all “I have been listening to this guy since high school, I can’t believe this.” Me neither, bud. Me neither.
When Amtrac walked off the stage, the crowd started chanting for an “encore,” and we got it in the form of two unreleased and previously unheard songs, including a really great remix he just did for Panda Bear and Alan Braxe’s “Step By Step.”
After that, we got drunk and went out again. I mean, I was definitely drunk. There was a lot of mezcal, but I guess I shouldn’t go around speaking for everybody.
Somewhere around 3 a.m., we drove Mr. Cornett back to his hotel and headed straight for the airport, where I magically made it thanks to my Clear membership onto the plane before it took off at 5, and then promptly fell the fuck to sleep.
Lisa had to work at 7:30 that morning, and she survived somehow. My newsletter is a day late because I’m 30-freaking-5 and I need a lot of time to recover.
But alas, an Oddyssey was had, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The silver lining is, I actually worked on Amtrac’s bio for the Extra Time promo cycle, and he promised me he’ll be releasing albums a lot more frequently from here on out. He’s an album artist now, and that means he’ll hopefully get out there and perform live even more often, too.
But wait! His tour’s not over! You can still catch him on the road, in Los Angeles and San Francisco this weekend, as well as upcoming dates in Chicago, Mexico City, the Denver and New Mexico Meow Wolfs, Portland, Seattle, Hawaii and more.
You should 100 percent go if he’s coming anywhere near you. Just make sure you double-check the time doors open. You wanna see the show, but you probably don’t wanna be like me, Lisa and Jose. I mean, idk if they’ll be mezcal in it for you, but you should have some in his honor, and you should definitely, absolutely bring some friends.
Howdy ho! Did you enjoy the ride? It was a long essay, but at least you didn’t walk away with two hangovers and a mountain of sleep debt!
I’m taking a break after this one. In fact, I’m getting on a cruise with my family next Sunday, and I’ll be somewhere in the Caribbean when your regularly-scheduled Monday newsletter is meant to hit your inbox.
That means you probably won’t get one next week, but who knows! Maybe I’ll send you a postcard in the form of a lil surprise. Maybe I’ll share something cute just for my paid subscribers. One way to find out!
Alsooo
One thing I am for sure doing is working on my video edits when I get tired of reading my book and sippin’ on pina coladas. You don’t have to wait to watch the rerun of Kat Calls: Lucille Croft, though! That’s already on YouTube, and here, below.
Also, I’ve never seen a licensed therapist, but back in February of 2021, I was having anxiety attacks out of nowhere while I was doing things like taking my vitamins and driving my car. I don’t have random anxiety attacks anymore. I mean, I still have anxiety attacks, but they’re usually due to something I can understand.
I think that’s because I’ve been seeing Luke Jenner (yeah, that Luke Jenner) as a life coach for a little more than a year. His biting insights, clever maxims and honest encouragement have without a doubt made my life easier to manage, and I hooked him up with my Billboard Dance editor, Katie Bain, who published this really wonderful interview with him last week. Please read it. He, and she, and it is great.
Open Up Your Heart: The Rapture’s Luke Jenner Is a Life Coach Now (Katie Bain, Billboard Dance)
Coming Up Next
I am coming back this Thursday at 7 pm ET / 4 pm PT with another edition of Kat Calls! This time, I’m meeting Starya in her studio. I first caught her when she opened for Justice and 2ManyDJs at that insane Notch party in L.A. She was up on that stage playing guitar and singing on the mic between track mixes, which was very impressive. She also just released a new tune called “Nice 2 Her” that you can enjoy and get pumped up by below!
Hope to see you at the show!
Absolutely Necessary
(This is the part where I share songs that are so good, they’re absolutely necessary to listen to. That’s it. That’s the bar.)
I made two Spotify playlists for this section that you can follow: one weekly playlist updated with just the new stuff every week, and one cumulative playlist that will host every song I pick ever (until Spotify tells me it's full). Check them out! I made them for you—and me, but mostly you.
And that’s it! Like I said, I’ll be on a cruise next week, so you may not get a newsletter. In the meantime, consider what sort of goodies you’d like to receive on the paid tier of Kat Scrawls.
I think I’m gonna start a monthly podcast for those who chip in, something silly where maybe I rant with friends about whatever the fuck music and culture stuff. Idk, people on Twitter voted for that, but I could also make a lil radio show for ya. I also thought about hosting a book club via Zoom?
I’ll always continue to share lil treats like articles you can’t read anywhere else or audio to interviews you can’t hear anywhere else, but you know, just thinking outside the box. Lmk what you think, and subscribe! Yay!
OKAY LOVE YOU, BYE.
Thanks for tuning into my newsletter. Listen to the playlists on Spotify. One is updated weekly with all the songs from each edition. The other is cumulative with all the updates ever!
I can’t comment about this but I can tell you that it was awesome meeting Kat and Lisa at 100 Gecs show! Hi, my name is Craig and I think Kat (and Lisa) have new lifelong fans!