Giving Voice to Our Everyday Darkness 

Kate Prascher doesn’t want you to look at her. She wants you to see what she sees. She wants to know if you see it too. For her, songs are a chance to say things that don’t usually make it into polite conversation. They are letters folded up and left at your doorstep. Songwriting allows her to say the quiet parts loud and loud parts quietly. 

Prascher’s songs are a recognition of our everyday darkness. They wade through the undercurrents of memory and draw half-portraits of characters both real and imagined. They shine a light on the complex web of our relationships. Her song “Bright Light This” was written to process grief and offer gratitude to family gone on before, “My halo’s in your hand / This life’s never what I planned.” Her song “Shiloh” is a haunting a cappella ballad, a conversation between two voices on the edge of loss.  Meanwhile, “Don’t Return” reveals the push and pull within someone left behind.

Prascher grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and now makes her home in the Hudson Valley of New York. She played piano and sang as a child and began playing roots music after she moved to New York. Once she heard bluegrass music live for the first time, Prascher dove headlong into playing mandolin and guitar, going to late night jam sessions, taking lessons with bluegrass maverick Michael Daves and penning her own songs. 

A seasoned performer, Prascher has played the Knitting Factory (New York), Jalopy Theatre (Brooklyn), LEAF Festival (Black Mountain), Club Passim (Boston) and the Ossipee Music Festival (Maine). Her debut album, Shake the Dust, features Bobby Hawk (Taylor Swift), Bennett Sullivan (Bright Star) and Nate Sabat (Mile Twelve). Her voice has been described as having an “intangible vintage feel.”