Artist description Strong songwriting featuring stand out female vocals. Strong pop songs with a hint of country.

Music Style Rootsy Rock with strong female vocals

Musical Influences Bonnie Raitt, Ricki Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell, Eva Cassidy, Tom Waits, Stevie Wonder, Beatles, Steve Earle

Similar Artists Bonnie Raitt, Eva Cassidy, Sarah MacLaughlin, Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge, Lucinda Williams

Artist History SHIVA, the second release from Kathleen Wilhoite, is the culmination of a long journey as an artist. Growing up in Santa Barbara, California Kathleen began singing in her church choir in first grade. Two years later, while singing on stage with The Carpenters at the Santa Barbara County Bowl, she stopped the show so that she could pull up her knee socks and got a huge laugh from the sold out crowd. Kathleen claims "it was then I knew I had to be a performer." She began by writing songs that sounded like the ones she was supposed to be practicing to on the piano. She was in every school theater production, and when she wasn't writing or acting, she was listening to her brother's AC/DC and Eagles records, or her father's Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald albums. Kathleen eventually became the youngest member of the Santa Barbara Songwriters Guild.After high school, Kathleen had a choice to make: would she pursue drama or music? She enrolled in the USC Drama School, and two months later had landed her first movie role. As her acting career began to blossom, so did her enthusiasm as a songwriter. She made a few demos, and a short while later landed a deal with Mercury Records. Unfortunately, her record deal came right before a "house cleaning." Her A & R person was fired and Kathleen was dropped. Disappointed and a bit confused, she packed her bags and moved to Europe, then to Austin, Texas where she found herself surrounded by "crystal-meth addicts."Back on the road she went, this time ending up in Nashville where she was enveloped by ''junkies and boozers." Eventually she made her way back to Los Angeles and continued to play music. At some point after returning home, her agent started calling and she began working as an actress again, starring for two years on the hit television show E.R. and a recurring role on Mad About You, and landing prominent parts in movies like Lorenzo's Oil and Angel Heart.A promoter/booking agent named David Surnow, now one of the owners of Daves' Record Company, was introduced to Kathleen and began booking her shows around Los Angeles. "People would pack into any venue I would book to see her play... and not just friends, but fans. Most people in the club/music scene have friends, but not many have fans." During this period she experimented with different musical styles, and attracted David Harte, who joined her band as drummer.In January of 1997 David Surnow and David Harte formed The Daves' record label and immediately signed Kathleen. They helped her put together a band that includes Tony Gilkyson (X, Lone Justice), Chris Wagner (Mary's Danish, Thermadore), Chris Joyner (The Freewheelers) as well as others that helped out in the making of Pitch Like A Girl. The Daves also produced her record, making sure to stay true to Kathleen's vision of her songs. "We wanted to show the strengths that were already there in the songwriting and singing, and make a record that doesn't try to draw attention to the production," says Harte. Surnow says "women will love this record."The Iyrics of SHIVA draw a picture of a girl who has lived through several lifetimes worth of experience and come out a secure woman. "This record is a dream come true," says Kathleen.

Group Members Chris Wagner - bass Tony Gilkyson - guitar Evan Frankfurt - Producer,Keyboards Chris Joyner - piano, organ David Harte - Drums John Bisharat - string and horn arrangements

Albums SHIVA,, PITCH LIKE A GIRL

Press Reviews The next step? Blue skies, green lights and big things for Kathleen Wilhoite. Ani DiFranco, Alanis Morissette, Lisa Loeb and the current crop of female singer/songwriters may have sold more albums than Wilhoite, but just wait." - L.A. TIMES (11/13/97)I call them my campfire songs," laughs Kathleen Wilhoite. "They're the songs I play when my friends come over.Looks like her circle of friends is about to get a lot larger. On her striking V2 debut album Pitch Like a Girl, this gifted singer-songwriter unveils an intensely personal, but instantly accessible, set of tunes that capture love and loss with honesty and wit. From the breezy "No One Can Touch Me" to the thumping "Dumb Old Girl" to the heart-rending "Wish We Never Met," Wilhoite's soulful performances have a ring of truth, the kind that can't be faked. I hate it when people go on about the origins of their songs," she admits, "but there's not a song on there I didn't live through.Kathleen Wilhoite has done a lot of living for a "new" artist. Growing up in Santa Barbara, California, she sang in the church choir, grooved to radio hit-makers like Tony Orlando, and took piano lessons, though she preferred making up her own tunes to learning old ones. In third grade, she appeared onstage with the Carpenters, performing "Sing" as part of a 20-person choir -- and drew big laughs when she halted the show by stopping to pull up her knee socks. "It was nerve-wracking but exciting to sing in front of that many people. I was always kind of a hambone," she recalls. By seventh grade, Wilhoite was writing and singing in the Boogie Woogie Bugle Girls, a harmony group modeled on the Andrews Sisters. A few years later, her interest in music escalated. "I'd gotten a new piano teacher who encouraged my writing, and when I was 16 I became the youngest member of the Santa Barbara Songwriters Guild," she notes. "All they were concerned with was writing formula-pop songs -- a 30-second verse, 15-second chorus, the kind of stuff that's done with a stopwatch. I'd written a song with my dad and brought it to the Guild. The Guild president said, "You need a rewrite on this," and rewrote it into the ground. It was horrible. My father was hurt and I felt so burned. I thought, If this is the music business, I don't want to have anything to do with it."But Wilhoite's interest in the performing arts also included drama. Although she originally thought "acting was something you do between songs," a senior-year performance in "The House of Blue Leaves" sparked her interest. "When I had to make a decision about college, I chose the USC drama program, instead of music school, because I'd totally soured on music," she admits. Her acting career advanced "with relative ease," and by 1983 she was appearing in such productions as the feature film "Private School" and the TV movie "Quarterback Princess." Better roles followed, and soon Wilhoite dropped out of school to act full-time, all the while putting aside money to finance her music. Writing songs in her trailer between takes on the sets of various films, she found her efforts rewarded by a development deal with Mercury Records in the late-'80s. I had a deal for four years, developing my music," she remembers, "flying back and forth to Nashville. The good part was meeting Jay Joyce, who taught me how to play guitar, which changed the color and shape of the songs I wrote. The demos that Jay and I turned out were great, but 'too many cooks' got involved and the final album was homogenized.Wilhoite cut an album that never saw the light of day. "There was no consistency. It was embarrassing." After her A&R person took a position in another department, Kathleen was dropped from the label. She entered a period of major soul-searching. "Outside everything was cool. I was getting lots of acting jobs, but inside I was crumbling. I had plenty of dough and nothing but bad intentions." Wilhoite fled Los Angeles, making stops in Europe, Austin and Nashville before returning to Sunny Cal and getting her head together. Continuing to act -- her resume would eventually include recurring tv roles on "L.A. Law" and "ER," as well as films like "Lorenzo's Oil" and "Crossing Delancey" -- she decided to take another stab at music, playing live around Los Angeles. "I tried all sorts of different things, punk rock, hard rock, college radio -weird, before I started to figure out what it was I was supposed to do. People seemed to like the punk songs, but then they'd say, 'That slow one you did was really cool.' " In 1996, a year after the birth of her son Jimmy-Ray, Wilhoite began writing with a vengeance, composing many of the songs that would ultimately make up Pitch Like a Girl. In May of last year, she recorded the album for Daves' Record Company, a label launched by David Surnow and her husband, David Harte. Supported by a group of cool players that included guitarist Tony Gilkyson (X), Chris Wagner (Mary's Danish), and Chris Joyner (the Freewheelers), as well as her husband, drummer David Harte (Beck, Spain), Wilhoite flourished the second time around in the studio. It was just so logical and easy, the way we did it," she notes. "We rehearsed for two weeks and came up with parts in a relaxed environment. There was no pressure. We got to try different sounds until we got something that worked.And work it does. "My girlfriends like the record and that makes me proud," she says. Kathleen Wilhoite isn't giving up what she calls "a great day job" -- her recent acting credits include the Disney animated tv character "Pepper Ann" and the HBO movie "Breast Men." But music is getting the lion's share of her attention these days. I'm not chasing some trendy carrot this time," she concludes. "I'm just trying to illustrate the songs the best way I can.

Location LA, CA - USA

Copyright notice. All material on MP3.com is protected by copyright law and by international treaties. You may download this material and make reasonable number of copies of this material only for your own personal use. You may not otherwise reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, or create derivative works of this material, unless authorized by the appropriate copyright owner(s).