Editor’s Note: Originally published October 2018
KB & The Idyllwilde is a four piece soul-rock band fronted by high octane vocalist Katie Burke. Burke’s vocals hit with the power of a Mike Tyson uppercut, while the band sets the soundscape with badass riffs and steady blues rhythms. In watching the band’s live performances, it’s clear Burke doesn’t hold back in her emotion and energy. It’s almost as if she is being exorcized on stage, and what comes out is pure unfiltered feeling. She is a merely a vessel in which her singing takes full control of her body and mind.
The band as a unit maintains a very natural and badass charm, and is sure to get heads banging, bobbing, and believing. Burke’s lyrical content deals within the offbeat and the ugly; the extremes of love, sex, death and pain. Yes, the stuff that makes us human, and the stuff that typically inspires songs- but not everybody can wrap it up tight and make rad songs. In listening to KB & The Idyllwilde, it’s quite likely you’ll hear familiar traces of Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Brandi Carlile and/or Jack White.
The band’s sound derived organically from the melding of its players’ experiences and styles. The instrumentation and dynamics of the band’s sound have been a long time coming for Katie, and she is very happy to call these guys and this band home. The group serendipitously came together in June of 2018 when Will White, upon moving to Nashville and becoming roommates with Katie, agreed to start playing music together. Will introduced Katie to his longtime friends Austin and Gray, and the work began. The band recorded their first single, “Believer”, after knowing each other only two or three rehearsals. The rest, as they say, is history.
“I used to write a lot of folk music, I still do. I used to cry and sing and get drunk and just hope to be saved. The music was beautiful and emotive and impactful, but I thought I just didn’t know how to write rock or soul. I thought that I just didn’t know enough about music or how to play guitar well enough to create the music I heard in my head that was uppity rocking and hard-hitting.”
Well Katie, congratulations, because we’d say you’re creating hard hitting rock tunes in spades now.
“I always had a huge attitude and energy and wasn’t feeling like I was utilizing it in my music. When my best friend died last year, everything changed. Everything was possible and things stopped being in my way. I got sober, I found my music, or it found me, but this is the music, this is that stuff I always kept away from myself, said I couldn’t have. “Believer” was the product of the unlocking.”
“Believer” is the band’s very first single, which is going to hit streaming services and airwaves October 26th, so keep your ears peeled.
Aside from lead singer and lyricist Katie Burke, KB & The Idyllwilde consists of Will White (lead guitar) Gray Papa (bass) and Austin Solomon (drums). To learn more about them and listen to their music, check out their website HERE.
