K
Karla Shickele is a songwriter, and a damn good singer. She wrote songs as the bass player of Beekeeper, she writes them as a member of Ida, and now she's written some for her first solo project, called k. Karla was founding member of the band Beekeeper with her brother, Matthew Shickele, and they released a 7", an EP 'Anywhere Will Do' (Muss My Hair Records, 1997), and a full-length Ostrich (Southern Record, 1998). Beekeeper received critical acclaim and high praise from musicians as a ground-breaking band that harnessed the beauty of dissonance and strange meters, holding hands with both pop and art.
Karla joined Ida in 1996 as the temp bass player, and stuck around, becoming a contributing songwriter ("Poor Dumb Bird" and "Fallen Arrow" on Ten Small Paces, "Tiger Dare" on Losing True, "This Water," "Man in Mind," and "Firefly" on Will You Find Me), and picking up some chops as a piano player. Karla has received approval from Ida fans for adding a beautiful alto voice to the winning vocal duo of Liz Mitchell and Dan Littleton.
Karla's newest project is a solo venture - Karla writes and arranges, and does almost all the singing in k. - but it's also very much a collaboration with a full roster of friends pitching in. The first k. full-length record came out on Tiger Style Records in early summer 2001 with a wide range of songs, from odd ballads to Velvet Underground - style slow hurricanes. If you like such Karla-penned Ida classics as "This Water," and "Man in Mind," you'll love this record. The debut album includes the generous and masterful involvement of Tara Jane O'Neil (Retsin, Sonora Pine), who recorded many of the tracks on the album, and played drums on a few songs, bandmates Dan Littleton and Liz Mitchell, Rose Thomson (Babe the Blue Ox), and many other great New York musicians.
After the release of the 'New Problems' and the k. / Low split 7"/CDEP entitled Those Girls, k. toured the U.S. countless times. This large amount of touring allowed k. to really flesh out the material for her sophomore effort which came out on Tiger Style on October 8th, 2002 and is simply titled Goldfish. This second album by k. fullfills and surpasses the promise of last years debut CD, New Problems.

K. is now a full-fledged band, with a new line-up that adds subtle guitar- and drum-driven power to Schickele's signature songwriting and unbeatable alto voice.Goldfish was recorded in the time honoured tradition of setting up an 8-track machine in a house in Woodstock, drinking huge quantities of bourbon on the porch, baking bread and recording at any hour of the day. The result is an album that's cohesive and confident, with a sexy ballad called Ballad, several stellar piano tunes (Keep Your Eyes on the Road and None of My Business), a few oddball rockers (Everybody Knows Your Name and Bounty), a cover of the underrated classic Moby Grape song I Am Not Willing and five other new songs.
New members Ruth Keating (drums, percussion) and Matt Sutton (guitar, pedal steel guitar), whose band The Malarkies has been one of New York's best kept secrets for years, are the primary accomplices on almost all the tracks. Growing away from the rotating cast of characters featured on the first record, k. now sounds like a band, a band that's toured together, written together, and worked to give each song its own sound. Goldfish is a document of a project in full motion, a collection of great songs sung by a singer who can alternately break your heart or freak you out, played by a bassist who's fallen in love with bass all over again, a drummer who knows when to crash and when to whisper and a goddamn bad-ass pedal steel guitar player.

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