Don't Tell

Kathleen Haskard is a 4th generation native Californian who divides her time between the rooftops of Southeast London and a tipi in a canyon on the Pacific coast in the Santa Monica Mountains above Ventura County Line. SINGER, SONGWRITER, political activist and all round multi-task force, Kathleen's new album DON'T TELL is released on her own Howlin' Hound label and distributed by Proper Music in the UK and on Nine Mile Records and distributed by Burnside in the USA. A SUSSED and culturally aware musician who passionately believes in the HEALING power of music, latent people power and that the PERSONAL is most definetly political. She WOKE up and smelt the coffee at an early age and grew up to know her family tree boasted a mexican folk hero and a RADICAL Irish partisan who was a VISIONARY footsoldier embedded in the American labor movement. In April 2006 Kathleen had the honour of singing backing vocals as part of the choir on Neil Young's album LIVING WITH WAR. Her new album Don't Tell is a prowling/pounding melange of delicately carnal, driven, in the moment songs, carved from the inside looking out and delivered from the outside glaring straight into your eyeballs.................. Recorded in Bristol, London and Hyde Street Studios in San Fransisco, Don't Tell features five tunes penned solo by Kathleen along with a handful of co-writes with Chuck Prophet, Stacey Earle, Toby Slater and Sandy Stewart. The San Fransisco crew of Prophet (Guitars/Bass), Paul Revelli (Drums), Danny Eisenburg (Hammond/Piano), Tom Heyman (Pedal Steel) and JJ Weisler (Gtr) are joined by London's Simon Alpin (Guitars/Bass) Bristol's Paul Wigens (Drums) and Grand Drive's Julian Wilson contributed organ and vocals. Prophet and Alpin have woken the guilty preacher, smoked his last cigarette and served him up a condemned mans breakfast whilst Kathleen's songs challenge his congregation. These two men have produced an album of casual brilliance, letting the songs rise in the swirling swell of 21st century uncertainty. Kathleen's lyrics have deep connections with the latent sexual and emotional paradoxes all around us. She is blessed with the lateral insight to pluck the beauty out of the brackish backwash. Relationship dynamics are turned inside out, meanings spun on their head, political warlord threads teased,de-lacqered and laid out naked in the street. Pregnant silences are decoded and given resonance. Roaring, yet fragile, strong, and with feeling, Kathleen's bag is 4 (Yeah, you heard right, FOUR) dimensional, chameleon-like, politiscised and leaves no carbon footprint. STOP PRESS this just in February 2009 Kat's song WILL SOMEONE EXPLAIN has been given a PeaceDriven Songwriting Award.