LIVE In Nashville: The Tech Behind Producing Music In The Age Of A.I. With Calico Singer Katie Boeck & Producer Dustin Ransom

Today on That Tech Pod, Laura, Kevin, and Gabi speak with singer-songwriter Katie Boeck and producer Dustin Ransom live in Nashville, Tennessee about making music with technology in the age of A.I.

Check out Katie's NEW music OUT NOW here: https://www.katieboeckmusic.com

Katie Boeck’s voice is earthy and cosmic. Her muses, modern and ancient. Her power, higher and worldly. Boeck doesn’t just revel in these contradictions—she weaves them together on her forthcoming album, Calico due April 28, 2023. Calico captures the arc of maturing relationships—from naïveté and illusion to self-love and sovereignty. It’s an album about modern love and the longing that still tugs beneath the promise of our hyper-connected culture. On the title track Boeck sings, “I’m in every direction / too many modes of connection.” And on the album's opener, Over Again, she ponders time and the gift of owning your history. “Would you do it over again/ lose ourselves along the path of good intentions”. These are songs about life taking unexpected courses and stories of love just out-
of-reach.

Boeck summons a pantheon of guides—wise women both mythic and real. Like Eve, Boeck likes to reimagine herself returning to Eden, whole. And Like Eurydice, Boeck followed one her musical guides, Joni Mitchell, out of the underworld. Recently divorced, newly single-parenting, Boeck was struggling to find her voice. So she looked to Joni’s oracular songs to help renew her own creative spark. She learned Joni’s watershed record Blue in its entirety and toured the show for a year. Living inside Joni’s cadences and signature melismas led Boeck back to her own sonic soil. She used songwriting’s ancient alchemy to find wisdom in her heartache and spiritual injuries. She also found kinship with co-producer Dustin Ransom (also recently divorced) who wound up co-writing and co-producing the album. 

Boeck’s career has been wildly varied. After graduating UCLA's Theater program, she spent her early twenties playing every Westside LA dive bar and coffeehouse, living on Lookout Mountain and soaking in that Laurel Canyon sound. She landed a spot in an all-women Bollywood band that took her on a surreal six-month “Eat, Pray, Love-esque” tour of India, playing everything from farm weddings to the
Indian Navy’s annual gala. Afterwards, Boeck found herself back in LA with reverse culture shock, her '91 Chevy Caprice Classic and a heartbreak from a recent Spanish expat romance. She wove these experiences into the songs that appear on her debut EP, Speaking of You.

Boeck then moved to New York to star in Duncan Sheik’s musical, Spring Awakening, where she shared the lead role of Wendla with deaf actress Sandra Mae Frank. The play’s success occasioned appearances on Late Night with Seth Meyers, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and a 2016 Tony nomination for Best Revival of a Musical. Boeck’s rendition of “Ave Maria” was featured on HBO’s critically-acclaimed television series “The Newsroom” and her cover of Ace of Base’s “The Sign” was recently featured on Netflix’s “Love Island”. She has played Electric Forest Festival, Mile of Music, the Cutting Room, City Winery and Carnegie Hall. Boeck now lives in Nashville with her five-year-old son. “Boeck sings with a plaintive passion.” – NEW YORK TIMES