4/22/2024: An Interview With Katy Davidson of Dear Nora
An experimental chat and a nomination for the Quinn’s Newsletter MVP award
Hello friends,
The subject of this week’s interview is Katy Davidson, who makes music under the names Dear Nora, Key Losers, and Lloyd & Michael.
I’m fairly certain that Allyssa introduced me to Dear Nora, either via a Rookie playlist or while living together at the Silent Barn. A lot of people were discovering Dear Nora around that time—Girlpool had a song called “Dear Nora” on their 2015 debut (“I’m still thinking about swimming in Seattle”) and Joyce Manor’s Barry Johnson cited Katy as an inspiration for 2016’s Cody. The next year, the legends over at Orindal Records reissued 2004’s Mountain Rock and later Three States: Rarities 1997-2007. (I wrote a guide to Dear Nora’s early catalogue back in 2018 but all the links seem to be dead…another great reminder that digital media is ephemeral!)
Meanwhile, Katy was cooking up some sick new Dear Nora tunes, leading to 2018’s Skulls Example and later 2022’s human futures. Both records retain the modesty of early Dear Nora albums while delivering sharp and humorous commentary on the environment, capitalism, the end of humanity, etc. I promise you that the result is a lot less depressing than I am making it seem.
Katy recently performed a career-spanning set at Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right. In between truly A+ banter, they got the whole room teary-eyed. Here’s a scene report: endless alumni of New York liberal arts colleges, stylish zoomers crying in the front row, Sarah Beth Tomberlin in a big hoodie, which she wore when she came onstage to duet with Katy. The second leg of Katy’s Dear Nora tour picks back up in May. I highly suggest snagging a ticket if you live on the west coast!
This interview was conducted over text and email while Katy drove across the country and I sat at home. Katy was a real trooper during this experiment, making them an early nominee for Quinn’s Newsletter MVP award. I’ve cleaned up a few things and added some links, but the freewheeling nature of our conversation has been retained for your reading pleasure. Behold, Katy’s thoughts on the past, present, and future.
hi katy it’s quinn! gonna keep things pretty casual, maybe even a little goofy since we both seem to be somewhat out of sorts. okay first up: you’re “dialing in” from Cleveland. what’s your history with the city, or Ohio as a whole?
Casual’s great right now. TBH, unless I’m forgetting something, no real history with Ohio or Cleveland. But I just came from Minnesota, and my grandmother was from there, and that was really sinking in while I was there. Because I only knew her as an Arizona retiree. But Ohio… I’ve got nothing. The lake is pretty and the architecture is cool.
i too have few thoughts about Ohio. I’m sorry to hear that you have been so sick. Is this your worst encounter will illness while touring?
Ha, unfortunately I’ve been sick on tour before. Mostly just very mild colds. But I was horribly ill for a long Australia tour in 2006 and I’ve never been able to forget it. I’m much more able to take good care of myself now.
any advice for a non-musician who is perpetually sick?
Are you asking for a friend? 😉
Or just randomly asking
SLEEP! And hydrate
i am very selfishly asking for myself
Perhaps you need more sleep and better hydration. And maybe more vitamin d??
seems like a fair diagnosis. okay the medical portion is OVER. what sort of media have you been consuming on the road?
Ok I’m absolutely devouring music in a focused way. I never get to do that at home. Lots of Allegra Krieger, new Adrianne Lenker, new Beyoncé, new Vampire Weekend, hmmm some mixes I’ve made for myself that I bop to. Also got the Diamond “no ads” version of POOG so I can crush episodes. Best pod, really. I’m listening to the book Filterworld by Kyle Chayka.
When I’m not driving, I’ve been watching a little NBA (final games of the season) and—not gonna lie—Survivor 46. HOWEVER I don’t like to fill all the space with noise TBH, so there have been stretches of just nothing, too. Very necessary.
dang sounds very fruitful. guitars, POOG, light reading about algorithms.
So fruitful! Good point about guitars. And honestly rare for me—I almost never listen to music with guitars anymore. This is a jag I’m on right now.
if i recall correctly, you are an ariana grande fan…
Ha, Ariana is a solid pop artist, yeah. Lately at home though I mainly listen to Bad Bunny. If someone asks “what do you put on?”—it’s usually that.
My home listening habits are strange though because I don’t have much room to listen to music in a “thinking” kind of way. Like put something on and think about it. Sounds draining. But Bad Bunny is just kinda perfect because it’s cool, fun, and you can dance to it. It’s smart but you don’t have to “think” about it.
I agree, it is draining! It’s important to have a relationship like that with all art and media! okay, some potentially heady questions. You’ve said this is going to be your last USA tour “probably for a while” and that your “own personal human future is very TBD” moving forward. Do you want to elaborate?
I meannnnnnn yeah I can elaborate. I think I made things sound more serious than they are. I’ll just riff on some messy thoughts about those statements though: 1) I’m tired! Since things “reopened” post-covid, I’ve been going very, very hard w/ travel, life, and work, and pushing myself probably more than is necessary. I can sense that I need some space from performing soon, so I can let the quiet set back in, recalibrate, reset, and honestly just rest. 2) my own human future… Let’s be real, I’ll probably just take a couple years and make another album or something, but I really have been thinking about completely different things to do besides record music & tour. Things like produce other people’s music, co-write with other people… things I already do at work, but I could expand in my outside-of-work life. This morning I literally woke up and wondered if I should ditch the guitar and just do stand-up. And I ALWAYS have fantasies about dipping all the way out. Like, human futures = last album. And then just live a life outside of that. But I probably won’t. Transitions fascinate me overall. I just like thinking about what I could do while I’m not recording/touring.
Oh and I also have wondered if I should focus on writing instead… write a book of essays or something…Just tossing ideas around.
I wonder if a Katy Davidson stand up tour would have a draw. Would be such a trip.
there’s only one way to find out…You’re playing some deep cuts on this tour, songs that you wrote in your early 20s. How have those songs been resonating with your current self ? Any surprises?
WOOF. Tough question because I have a range of reactions based on which song it is, oddly (perhaps). I think a broad way to answer is that the songs definitely don’t feel like they’re mine. Which I know sounds very cliché, but it’s just so true. They completely belong to other people now. When I wrote them, I got what I needed to get out of my system. That was 20 years ago. So now they absolutely belong to everyone else. I’m a mere vessel when I perform them. I hope this doesn’t make anyone feel weird, but I really don’t feel anything when I play them. My heart is warmed when I see people react to them though. That aspect is really cool. I’m honored and amazed people know my music. But the newer songs are the only ones that mean much to me personally anymore. So I will say that I’m also glad that people really seem to love those songs, too.
I imagine that there could be a potentially jarring distortion of self that comes when you are an artist making new work while some people just want to hear the “hits.”
I feel very fortunate that my newer songs also seem to resonate with people. There are a lot of people who come to the shows who only know Skulls Example and human futures, and they want to hear me play songs from those records. So I feel like there’s a balance, and expectations of me don’t seem totally weighted towards the past. The songs from the past that are the most difficult for me to play are the ones with (IMO) depressing lyrics – “Hung Up,” “Come On Inside,’ e.g. While I respect songs like those (and I respect that they resonate with people), and I like what I did melodically with them, the lyrics feel so far from where I am right now in life, it’s hard to sing with much conviction. Sometimes I play them and it's ok with me, but the lyrics do make me feel sort of weird inside. Like, kind of sad. But songs like “Lonesome Border, pt 1” and “When the Wind Blows”—those lyrics feel more timeless, and they’re easier for me to access, and perform with ease and comfort.
I might just get to a place where I stop playing the old songs completely, and I would like to think that would be fine. I’ve always been very forward-looking. I don’t really like thinking about the past. TBH, I’m already excited for what I’m going to write next. I really want to play new-new songs already. Like, even newer than human futures. But I need to write them first. :-)
Are you aware of the Dear Nora Guitar Chord/Tab Site?
Ha, yes! I know Jacob who made the site. He and I should sit down sometime. I can help fill in some blanks.
Question from a friend: Have you ever played Second Life? They have a theory that that’s what “Sunset on Humanity” is about. Relatedly, I, Quinn, saw that you’ve played Breath of the Wild. Have you played Tears of the Kingdom? What’s your favorite area of Hyrule?
I've never played Second Life, but yes, “Sunset on Humanity” is based on something like it. When I wrote that song, I was thinking that Sunset on Humanity was a good name for a video game, and the world in that video game was so beautiful and captivating, that people would choose to be in there (endlessly beautiful/blissful) instead of being out in the real world (which we’re steadily ruining). There’s a similar set-up in the book Snow Crash, and so the song has echoes of that.
I love Breath of the Wild and I think it’s a masterpiece. I haven’t played Tears of the Kingdom yet because I’m a little concerned it might trigger vertigo, which is an issue I deal with. But I’ll probably try it out at some point.
My favorite area of Hyrule is honestly my house in Hateno Village. I just like chilling there and swimming in my pond. Getting a really good night of sleep.