Kat Edmonson: Austin’s Great Jazz Hope

Singer's 2009 debut LP created a local sensation

As talent booker of the Elephant Room - not to mention one of the most in-demand horn players in town since the early '70s - Mike Mordecai is the godfather of the Austin jazz scene. And he'd never seen anything quite like 2009’s rocket rise of Kat Edmonson, the adorable pixie with the voice somewhere between Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee, who has been singing in clubs for only about two years.

"She's just a natural," Mordecai said of the Houston native who moved to Austin in 2002 to go to college but instead found her classrooms in the jazz basements and lounges of steak and seafood restaurants downtown.

As a local jazz vocalist, she knows what it's like to sing while everyone's talking. So it was nice when all the talking was about her. Kat’s debut album Take to the Sky was No. 1 at Waterloo for two months and cracked the Billboard jazz chart, even though it was self-released. Featuring a bossa nova version of the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" among other vibrantly reworked standards like "Summertime" and "Night and Day," Sky established Edmonson as the first Austin-based jazz singer to break out nationally.

Everybody loves Edmonson, even those who don't "get" jazz, but Mordecai said he wasn't won over when she first sang at the Elephant Room's open mic in 2005. "I told her she should learn 'Dindi' by Antonio Carlos Jobim. It's a very rangy song, with a complex melody line," Mordecai said. The next Monday the young waitress from Cool River restaurant/bar turned up ready to sing "Dindi."

"The bass player didn't know the bridge, so there was no foundation," Mordecai recalled, "and I had this drunk guy in my ear, trying to get a combo to play in his hotel suite later that night. There were all these distractions - but at the same time I was hearing this perfect pure voice. Kat was just nailing every note."

Mordecai advised Edmonson to keep coming back and sitting in and getting her chops down before she joined a group. But a couple weeks later, Mordecai was stunned to see Edmonson fronting Kat's Meow, with eccentric, shades-wearing guitarist Slim Richey. "It worked," Mordecai says of the odd collaboration.

Kat Edmonson and Georgia Bramhall backstage at the Paramount 2012. Photo Todd V. Wolfson

The word started spreading about an amazing new singer in town who not only performed standards but wrote her own material. Keyboardist Kevin Lovejoy, who had just gotten off the road with John Mayer, was looking for a singer for a gig at the Lair, a tiny upstairs bar on Sixth Street. At the suggestion of trumpet master Ephraim Owens, Lovejoy hired Edmonson. Six months later they were partners in both senses of the word.

Lovejoy thought he hadn't heard Edmonson sing before that night at the Lair, but he was mistaken. In 2002, he was watching American Idol and saw that one of the singers auditioning was from Austin. "I was with some people and I asked, 'Has anyone heard of this singer?'" said Lovejoy, also a Houston native. "It wasn't until a few months after I met Kat that I made the connection."

Edmonson passed the first "Idol" auditions and was flown to Hollywood as one of the final 48 contestants, but she was dismissed by Simon Cowell and the gang as too demure. She’s not a belter.

Back in Austin, Edmonson planned to go to Austin Community College to pick up some credits before transferring from the College of Charleston in South Carolina, where she attended her freshman year, to the University of Texas. Her heart, however, was in singing for a living. On the morning she went to enroll, she heard a country song that changed her path. "I don't even know who it was by - maybe Cory Morrow - but the lyrics were about skipping classes to sing for your friends," Edmonson said. She turned the car around and decided she wasn't going back to school.

"My mother and some of her friends had an intervention," Edmonson said, with a laugh. "They said I had to go to college - that's all there was to it. Everybody thought I had lost it when I said I wanted to sing." Katherine became Kat.

Edmonson credits her mother, who raised her without a father around, for inspiring her musical tastes at a young age. A Sunday ritual was watching old movie musicals at the home of Kat's godmother. "One of my favorites was High Society, with all the Cole Porter songs," said Edmonson, whose speaking voice is of the same high pitch as her singing. "My mother exposed me to Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart and Frank Sinatra when I was 4 or 5 years old.”

It wasn't until a talent show at Houston's Lamar High School during Edmonson's senior year that she first performed in public, singing an Indigo Girls song with friends.

During her year in Charleston, an 18-year-old Edmonson would close up at Starbucks and sneak into a black blues club, where they'd let her sing. At Cool River, she was known to jump onstage with the cover band to sing Fleetwood Mac. She's always loved to sing, but it wasn't until Monday nights at the Elephant Room that Edmonson found her true voice.

"The thing that's really unique about Kat is that, as young as she is, she has her own sound," Lovejoy said of her tone and phrasing that are both knowing and vulnerable. "She connects (with listeners) because there's an honesty in her voice."

Recorded in two days in September at the Texas Treefort studio in West Austin, Take to the Sky features a rhythm section of drummer J.J. Johnson, who toured with John Mayer, bassist Eric Revis from Branford Marsalis' group, and Lovejoy's older brother Chris Lovejoy, in from California where he plays with Charlie Hunter, on percussion. "It just so happened that the musicians we wanted, who are all incredibly busy, were available for those days," producer Lovejoy said. It was the first time the Lovejoy brothers played on a record together.

"We didn't have a big budget, but we didn't need one," Edmonson said of the album, which was cut live in the studio. "It's jazz, so there's no need for layers or overdubs."

It cost more to mix the album than record it, but Lovejoy and Edmonson agreed it was worth it to hire the legendary Al Schmidt, who mixed most of Sam Cooke's classics and "Aja" by Steely Dan. As a bonus, Edmonson also got a pretty impressive endorsement from the 19-time Grammy winner. "Kat Edmonson is the best new jazz singer I have heard in years," Schmidt is quoted in press materials. "I know she'll be around for years to come."

The relationship with Lovejoy didn’t last, however. Edmonson cut her hair and moved to New York City where she’s made a decent living for 10 years. Highlights include a 2012 Austin City Limits taping, signing with Sony for 2014’s The Big Picture, a tour opening for Lyle Lovett, and a featured singing roll in Woody Allen’s 2016 film Café Society. But don’t call her a jazz singer anymore. She continues to put out “vintage pop” albums on her Spinnerette label, most recently 2020’s Dreamers Do.

Here’s The ACL taping of“Lucky” from Kat’s second LP Way Down Low: