Kat Says: "Chase Your Dreams! Do The Thing! Stream Season 1 Of Kat Calls!"
I made something out of nothing, and you can, too.
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Hey Friends,
Guess how I spent my weekend!
No, I didn’t fly to San Francisco to see Skrillex and Fred Again… shut down the San Francisco Civic Center (although I pretended to entertain the idea for five seconds before remembering I’m broke as hell, lol).
I did something WAY BETTER than that:
I WORKED!
Haha! Joke is on me! That’s all I’m ever doing! But seriously, it was great work that ultimately crossed off a huge item on my to-do list for this year, and soooo!
It is with great pride and immense pleasure that I announce:
ALL OF KAT CALLS SEASON 1 IS NOW STREAMING ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS AND WHEREVER YOU MAY LISTEN TO PODCASTS ON THE INTERNET!!!!
(Watch this trailer, it shows you every guest from Season 1, and it’s impressive!)
Yes! The little quarantine project that started it all is now available as an audio-only experience you can enjoy on the go. The episodes have long been on YouTube as a series of videos you can consume, and you can still watch them all that way, but I feel the audio podcast format is one in which Kat Calls replays can really thrive.
I spent nine hours this weekend uploading the season, and it was an incredible reminder of how far I’ve come.
I’m floored by the incredible artists who blessed my little DIY interview series, and the major publications and brands who signed on to support my efforts in those early days. Simply put, without Kat Calls Season 1, Super Kat World doesn’t exist.
I had an idea, I made that idea come to life, I figured it out along the way, and now I’m here. :’) And you’re here with me, so thank you so so much.
It all started when the world stopped. It’s no exaggeration to say I went from three years of constant plane trips to hiding from COVID in my friend Ana’s guest room in the span of a single day. Wildly, every person on the planet can relate to that sentence. We were all forced to stop short, sit still and reconfigure our lives—and that’s if we were the lucky ones.
I, like many of you perhaps, lost almost every work opportunity I’d built over the past 10 years in an instant. After five years, my main freelance gig at Billboard went ghost as the company put a freeze on its freelance budget, and as I sat there doing mental math, every other place I wrote for started tightening its belt, too.
I also, like many of you, started watching a lot of DJ sets on Twitch. I mean, there wasn’t much else to do. Eventually, I started drifting from the DJ sets and started checking out the other weird channels. I remember tuning into a guy who was living on the side of a river, streaming himself doing his laundry in a bucket and hanging it to dry on a line. I thought to myself, “wow, you can really stream anything on Twitch.”
Then I got an idea.
Transcription has always been a big part of my interview process, not only because it’s a necessity but as a means of deeply digesting the conversation outside the pressures of conducting it. Sometimes my interviews are so fun and casual and endearing, I’d sit there listening to them and say “I wish other people could hear this.”
Watching this man simply exist by a river in front of live viewers, I was struck with the idea that I could do this. I could conduct interviews with artists I love live on Twitch, and taking things even further, the people tuning in could be a part of that conversation, reacting to the things we were saying and laughing about in real time. They could ask their own burning questions and be a part of the whole ordeal.
That was even better than just sharing an old interview audio clip. That was actually a really fun and interesting idea.
I’d already thought of the Kat Calls name. I remember Tweeting something about “What if I started a talk show called Kat Calls, and I interviewed whoever the hell I wanted and we talked about whatever the hell we wanted?”
I can’t find the Tweet, although I know it exists, lol. Friends at the time liked the idea, and so I got to work on making it real.
I didn’t know anything about Twitch or Streamlabs, didn’t know what an overlay was and barely knew anything about Zoom. All I knew was I had an idea that was cool and nothing else to do.
I went back to Twitter and sent my motivation into the ether, and I got a ping back from my friend Jeff Yau. He managed Droeloe, and the then-duo had a new song coming out that spoke to the loneliness of quarantine. He wanted to know if Droeloe could be the first guest on Kat Calls, and I was like
ARE YOU FUCKING FOR REAL? LET’S GOOOOOO.
A week later, I’d started a Twitch account, downloaded Streamlabs and had the first-ever Kat Calls on the books. :’)
My friends Jordan and Ana helped me set up a streaming area in the latter’s downstairs living room. I stacked a bunch of Amazon boxes on top of each other and sat my laptop on top of them. I hit “go live” and started talking to viewers from all over Europe, India, the US and more. I played Droeloe’s new song, then shared my screen so everyone tuning in could see us all on Google Meet.
I was nervous and used my most high-pitched voice. I don’t sound natural at all lol, but we talked for more than an hour, and it felt SO AWESOME. I was high af when it was over. I had to go walk around the man-made lake in front of Ana’s house just to feel my fingers.
And I never looked back :’)
My next guest was Destructo, aka Gary Richards. Instead of setting up in Ana’s first-floor living room, I sat in front of her TV and had a bunch of vintage cruise videos and 4K ocean visuals playing behind me. My friends texted me like, “Wow! How did you set up those cool visuals?!” Everyone in the house had to sit there quietly for an hour and a half while I streamed. It was the most ridiculous DIY thing I’d ever done, but it was working!
Then I had Craze, then Jubilee, then Justin Jay. I was 10 years into my career and calling in favors from the friends I’d made along the way. I was so honored by everyone who decided to join in my experiment, and I learned a little more with each passing stream.
I soon learned my old-ass Macbook Air wasn’t exactly prime for all this software, but seeing as how I was broke, the best I could do for an upgrade was buy my buddy Gianmarco’s used Macbook Pro for $500.
That was a huge boon, but I still had issues with lag until my girl Dani Deahl (who came on Kat Calls, of course) taught me even more Streamlab tricks.
I thought I had it all fixed, then I hosted deadmau5 and Carl Cox on the same stream and sat in horror as they lagged so hard, it looked more like a slideshow set to audio than a fucking livestream. I could have had a panic attack in front of the whole world, but I took a deep breath, laughed at what I couldn’t change, and enjoyed the conversation.
Then I called Dani and made her help me some more LOL.
I did eventually figure out how to host a livestream without lag, but the entire first season is rife with technical difficulties.
That used Macbook Pro didn’t even last six months. As you listen to the streams, the guest’s audio gets worse and worse because the speakers, which Gianmarco no doubt used to test his music production, blew out more and more without my noticing.
Now, of course, I hear every fucking crack with painful clarity. As I uploaded Kat Calls: Rusko and Kat Calls: Good Times Ahead to DSPs, I discovered the audio file just EXPLODES and then becomes extremely quiet for 30 minutes to a full hour. I didn’t know these things were even happening at the time! What??? Why??? I still don’t understand, and yet, I stand here today, four years on, having survived it all.
The final straw with the speakers came when I secured an interview with A-Trak for a stream Movement Festival’s producer Paxahau had hired me to run. It was a program I’d conceived of and put together all by myself, counting down the best music videos of the year, and I got A-Trak on Zoom for a pre-recorded interview discussing the hilariously unhinged clip for Duck Sauce - “Mesmerize.”
It was such a good interview. I was riding so high on the accomplishments. Then I listened to the recording and realized it was completely incomprehensible. The speakers were totally blown. My interview with A-Trak was ruined 🙁
I made an emergency call to the Apple store and dropped nearly $2k in savings on a new Macbook Pro. I had a Kat Calls with Alison Wonderland and Valentino Khan the next day and I needed it ASAP.
I reinstalled everything, spent an entire day preparing, and it seemed like everything was going to be okay.
Then as soon as I started the Zoom call with Alison and Valentino, my own video feed went dark. I could see them. They couldn’t see me, but hey, at least they had each other.
Then Alison was like, “um, I think everyone can hear us on the stream.”
I thought I’d muted us while a video played. I told her this about 20 times before I finally realized she was right. We were not muted. I wanted to die.
I have never been so fucking embarrassed in my life, and then I had to spend an hour conducting an interview while no one could see my face. That was probably a gift, because my face was no doubt red and I was probably close to tears, but you know what?
I lived.
And that episode is now on DSPs, too, hahahahahaha.
Kat Calls Season 1 is the meatiest season I’ve ever done. I was literally hosting a stream almost once a week, then I started hosting them for Spin’s Twitch channel, and then for Paxahau. I can see myself move from Ana’s guest room in Florida to a sublease in San Francisco, to signing an actual lease on a house in Berkeley. I watch as I learn new tricks, hire friends to help me make overlays and eventually even a logo.
I try new things, abandon them, fail at other things, pivot. I do it all in front of a live audience, in front of friends and family, in front of artists I admire, for better or worse.
I put myself out there and did something because I thought it would be cool. Four years and two months later, I’m still doing it :’)
AND IT HAS GROWN!
Further Reading: Kat Says: “Music Journalism Is Dead, Long Live Music Journalism.”
I just counted, and next week’s Kat Calls with David Sinopoli will be my 88th Kat Calls. If I keep on schedule, I may even do my 100th Kat Calls before the end of the year! Maybe I’ll make that episode a special celebration. Maybe I’ll invite some guests back, maybe I’ll play old clips. Maybe I’ll give some shit away.
Maybe something will happen in my life that takes me off the rails and I won’t get to Kat Calls: The 100th Episode until 2025. I don’t know!
That’s the beauty of being a creative person (and trust and believe, you are a creative person). You don’t actually ever know what you’re doing, but if you refuse to stop, you’ll figure it out along the way.
Kat Calls has fallen into place. It’s a rather well-oiled machine with a pretty distinct identity. I have a way of doing things, the show has a way of pacing and format that can be relied upon, but it’s always changing and evolving.
It’s my own thing, and I can do with it whatever I want, but it also belongs to every person who’s ever tuned in, because as I say at the start, this is your show as much as it is my show, because it’s honestly nothing without the folks who come and hold things down in the chat, bringing the questions and the jokes (looking at you, JoeyHeadset and Tordenstrike).
I say all this today not to simply wax poetic about my own journey but to remind you that YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU FUCKING WANT TO.
Go! Try! Do something you don’t know anything about! Make a thing! Fail in public! Laugh it off! Who gives a fuck?!
Even when you think you’re failing, you’re succeeding at giving something a try. You’re showing up, you’re giving it a go, you’re learning, you’re growing, you’re taking a step toward the future and actively living a life that brings you joy.
Don’t be scared. The worst that can happen is you have Grammy-nominated producers on your show and you just absolutely fuck up the stream quality and sit watching it be a mess for an hour, just to have some stranger in the comments is like, “no offense, but why the fuck would these people be on your nothing-ass show?”
And then you say, “Because I made a show.”
And then you keep doing it :’)
(Okay, that last part is specific, and the comment wasn’t actually that rude, but you know what I mean.)
I’ve never had more fun in my entire life than the fun I’m having creating a world of my own. You have the same exact power, and what you want to build is specific to you, and I wanna see it!! Share it with the world!
DO ALL THE THINGS!
BUT FIRST:
Listen to me figure out whatever the fuck it is that I’m doing—in real-time—by streaming Kat Calls: Season 1 on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and any and all DSPs :)
Coming Up
Kat Calls Seasons 2, 3 and 4 will be next on DSPs. I’m going to refocus my efforts on some video edits and upcoming streams, but before the month is over, I hope to have Season 2 uploaded, so stay tuned.
Also…
LP Giobbi made some hummus, and it is very tasty! It’s a collaboration with a company called Little Sesame, and it’s Green Goddess flavored. I’m not getting paid to share this info with you, but I was sent a free sample of it, and I’ve been enjoying it for the past few weeks, so it only makes sense that I should tell you! A 3-pack from the Little Sesame website below might be your cheapest and easiest option to trying some for yourself, but I think you can build that pack with a variety of flavors. I’m sure the rest are also good.
Speaking of free shit, I got a copy of a new book about the Chemical Brothers for review. It’s out in stores later this week, so stay tuned for more info on that!
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.
Here are this week’s five highlights:
Skrillex, Hamdi, TAICHU & OFFAIAH - “Push”
THE HEAT LEVEL IS OVER 9,000!!!! Nah, this tune is an absolute slap. P sure Skrilly dropped this on Friendship, but even if he didn’t, I swear to god I’ve heard it a few times out and about—and not just because Hamdi’s viral “Counting” uses the same growling bass sound. Also, any song that samples “Bring In The Katz” is an instant hit in my book. I haven’t stopped screaming “YES, OH” since 2012.
Charli XCX - "The 360 remix with robyn and yung lean"
Charli already had me excited when I saw Robyn on the track, but YUNG LEAN, TOO? I mean, be still my heart. Two of Sweden’s absolute best with the princess of bringin’ bloghouse back. The original “360” is a bop, but this is a counter-cultural moment. Also, Robyn is not the worst rapper I’ve ever heard, so that’s fun to know.
Disclosure - “She’s Gone, Dance On”
Holy crap, Disclosure does not miss! This one took a long time to release, apparently, as they had to wait months for the Ennio Morricone sample to clear. Yes! The same Italian composer behind The Good, The Bad and The Ugly released this sick “Dance On” banger. “It was a bit of a mish,” the duo’s Guy said while his brother Howard danced and sang along to the single behind him. All good, boys, just in time to dance all summer long!
salute - “maybe it's u” Feat. Sam Gellaitry
Another song that goes so fucking hard in the first 20 seconds. This sounds like what I imagine Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" would sound like if Daft Punk produced it. You can totally sing that chorus (sung by Michael Jackson!) to this song and it vibes, btw, but I like it better with Sam Geillaitry’s alt-pop falsetto. BANGER.
Molly Otto - “These Things”
Three cheers to Molly Otto for landing on one of our favorite labels! Her Snowball EP is due for release on bitbird later this month, and it’s announced with the release of this upbeat, kawaii-glitch singalong. It’s full of bittersweet emotion and she’s dedicating it to all us big dreamers: “If you have trouble letting go of control in your life and are a planner of all planners, hopefully these lyrics resonate with you,” Otto writes on Instagram. Wait! That’s me! It does!
There are even more songs on the full Spotify playlists that you should hear, including this really great sassy club banger from Mija. Dive in and enjoy.
Alright, another Kat Scrawls in the books. I’m out of here. Thanks so much for all your support. Come say hi in the Discord maybe xoxo.
Until next time, see you on the Internet!
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!