https://www.lifoti.com/2026/07/inside-katya-redpaths-remarkable.html

Being featured came very unexpectedly, especially being placed on the cover! It still feels surreal, like I won the lottery. It is humbling to me how much care and talent went into this piece - the editorial team initiated this process, and they really “got” me!

The print version includes photos from the farm, ones my New Day Farm Vermont Rangers will recognize! These photos are decidedly un-glamorous (unlike the rest of the gorgeous magazine), but they do show a side of me that I guess these editors found relevant and valuable. I’m including one of them below, from the sugarhouse.

Seeing them included in the story about my music makes me feel unusually whole, especially with a life that has pulled me in so many crazy directions. Often I felt I was being battered on the outer rim of the wheel, rather than directing the spokes. I guess music has always been holding it all together magically at the center.

Thank you, Lifoti.

https://www.lifoti.com/2026/07/inside-katya-redpaths-remarkable.html

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Melissa Ryan knows how to probe deep into the artistic well. Her questions drew out aspects of my process I had never considered before, and her piece serves up a delicious plate of insights with nuance and curiosity and warmth.

I am deeply touched and honored.

Here is a small tidbit - I encourage you to look at the full article. Lifoti is distributed to 80 countries and is unusual in that it still produces beautiful paper editions, so if you want to spring for one of those, I’m sure they’d appreciate it and you will be reminded of what a pleasure it is to hold an artistic publication in your hands.

“In an industry where artists are often encouraged to define themselves through a single genre or carefully managed image, Redpath has chosen a different path. She celebrates artistic freedom, embraces cultural diversity, and trusts authenticity over expectation. Her music crosses stylistic boundaries with remarkable ease because it has never been driven by categories. It has always been driven by human connection.” - Lifoti

My record, TIME CHANGES EVERYTHING is available on CD and vinyl from Spinney Media

All streaming links are on my website, katyaredpath.com/link-in-bio

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I had been laboring for a while over some problematic lyrics. Suddenly, this unrelated, simple, joyful, tune wafted in. Gently but insistently, it forced me to stop hunching over my computer, stand up, stretch, pick up my guitar, and play a long, open, exhaling Emaj7 chord. For those of you who don’t know, this is a harmony with infinite possibilities.

“Me! Me! Me now!” the chord said, clear as day. Then the next day, again while I was cramped at the computer: “Pick up your guitar and pay attention to me!” Pretty soon a new song started emerging, and it became a constant distraction, breaking my rule to try to finish one song at a time.

After a ton of pure fun repeating open chords and dancing around, the simplest of lyrics emerged. This song turned out to be about letting go, and allowing feelings to be your guide: “Feel it…to believe it…Feel it…and you can be it…” A breath of fresh air!

It was an exercise in embodied intuition and confidence - not overthinking.

Musically, the groove was a throwback the old Washington DC soul radio I listened to as a kid. I’m talking about the healing sounds of Barry White, Bill Withers, Earth Wind and Fire, Sly & the Family Stone, Marvin Gaye, Al Green and Stevie Wonder and so many more.

Don’t overthink it

I didn’t sweat anything about making this song - until I got to the studio. It started out fine. My producer knew exactly what to do with this new tune. First he laid down a great bass line. Then he had me play six separate tracks of short, precise little guitar licks, each hitting a different spot in the rhythm - the true funk process, but done solo in the studio. It was so much fun.

We served each track up with a slightly different sound treatment. It sounded amazing.

It all came together so well - almost too well, and I had a complete freakout.

What the heck was I freaking out over, you might reasonably ask? Especially after being so ultra-cool and receptive up to that point? Especially when it sounded good?

Maybe it was just a form of stage fright. I’m still not sure, but somewhere deep in me I feared I was imitating, and perhaps culturally appropriating, the black music I loved and grew up listening to. I was terrified of being cringey. As a white girl, I wasn’t qualified!

But maybe a pure love and desire to understand music is what qualifies us? How is it okay to absorb and reinterpret the styles and conventions of, say, Russian or Appalachian music, New Orleans blues, or Brazilian samba music, and not this? No good reason. Carole King, a white girl, wrote hits for Motown, after all! (Bless her.)

Despite these excellent points, I went into a deep hole, and insisted that we downplay the cool funky stuff we had made, and try to play it some other way. I asked my producer to dumb it down, essentially. I threw the baby out with the bathwater. He thought I was nuts.

Well luckily, that didn’t last.

Thor to the rescue

Thankfully my old childhood friend Baron Thor Tymas was in town. Baron is a world-class guitarist, retired professor of music and all around great guy - the type of person who is just a balm to be around. And we listened to the same radio stations at exactly the same age. I was thrilled when he agreed to play lead guitar on my record. Of course it is beautiful work - go listen below to Feel It just for Baron’s guitar!

Baron also helped me climb out of my hole by reassuring me that the funky demo didn’t sound like any one thing, that the song had its own identity, and didn’t come across to him as appropriated. Then Anne Petrov, another dear childhood friend of mine, crowd-tested the song with a bunch of guys in line to get ice cream in Northeast DC. They loved it. They got on her phone and told me so!

The feel had to be right, and it was. Funky section rehabilitated! So yes, I was temporarily insane, but I got over it. And my producer was relieved.

Feel It is coming out this summer, with Baron Thor Tymas on lead guitar.

A short acoustic version is on my last Substack, here, with wild bird accompaniment.

Now I sing it in my head all the time, and it makes me happy. I hope you like it too. Just a bit of lighthearted fun - feel it!

Special pre-release audio !! Listen here & let me know what you think:

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Lyrics:

Feel It 
When you feel something coming around the bend
And you look up —it’s your old friend
To make a memory that will never end
You got to feel it while it’s happening

You got to feel it
To believe it
You got to feel it
So you can keep it

It could be hiding in plain sight
You got to see it in the right light 
When it falls in place and fits tight
Believe it when it feels so right

It’s intuition that’s inbound, coming round, full of sound
It’s this ignition to start up from underground -  turn it around 
And we can feel, and we can feel

Feel it
To believe it
Feel it
And you can be it

And you’ll be bright, so bright and brighter 
Shining bright so bright and brighter - light up the night

Feel it
To believe it
You gotta feel it
Then  you can be it

You can’t be frightened
When you’re enlightened
You gotta feel it
Then you can be it
And we can feel, we can feel

© 2026 by Katya Chavchavadze Redpath (BMI)

Thanks to the birds for accompanying me for free ;0)

The magic of the between-times

Sometimes getting away, changing up your routine, or even losing the thread entirely and “wasting” time can produce unexpectedly creative results. We have all experienced this, but it can be so hard to remember that time off - even a momentary distraction - might really be time ON.

This summer, I’ve received uncanny wisdom and guidance from putting my task-work aside and doing something like staring at a tree, taking a walk, drawing a freeform doodle, or messing around on the keyboards. Time seems to slow down. Afterwards I never regret the time away from my so-called progress, and often find a new angle or energy to move forward with it.

Chronos and kairos

There is a problem with the English language: we only have one word for time. We conflate different concepts of time into one word, and as a result, I think maybe our thinking about time gets sloppy, and we miss opportunities. Mastery over time - or at least over the concepts contained in the word time, seems to me a worthwhile goal.

We tend to stick to mathematical portions of measured time: “I don’t have time” or even “I had a good time.” We do have the concept “Father Time” - a personification indicating something like an infinite clock as a force like gravity. But he still keeps the hours, is a bit archaic and out of fashion with his beard and scythe, and he’s rarely invoked except in a poetic sense.

The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. They were two separate concepts. Chronos, or chronological time, is the time we measure with a clock, and tends to be what we fret about not having enough of. The old sky god Kronos or Chronos, father of Zeus, is probably the source for our bearded Father Time and who knows - maybe also the basis for our classic western bearded, judgy God depicted in the sky, tapping his wristwatch at us. This chronological understanding of time is ultimately tied to death - we mere mortals only get so many breaths, and that’s it.

Kairos, on the other hand, signifies a special, significant moment in time, a moment of a different order, suspended outside the realm of chronological time. In a sense, it is about circumventing death and finite, measurable time. It is a moment in between the tick-tocks, touching infinity - it is timeless!

It seems way too important a concept not to have a Greek god of its own. And it does, though such a humble little god! His name is often spelled Caerus, but related to Kairos. He is the youngest child of Zeus, the god of the fleeting moment, and the god of opportunity. He’s bald and naked and dashes around, slippery and difficult to catch. If you miss him, he won’t come back. According to Aesop, he represents “the brief moment when all things are possible,” what I would call the ultimate creative moment.

Isn’t that liberating? I love Kairos!

A history digression, just because…

I have given this concept of kairos a lot of thought, ever since I did a deep dive into the work of the Christian existentialist philosopher Paul Tillich, back in college. Tillich asserted that each life has a series of kairos moments, big and small, which he defines as moments when “the finite meets the infinite.”

History also has such moments. He described and rated various kairos moments according to their impact and importance to the whole. There are small kairoi (plural) all the time. He would define the biggest historical kairoi as moments for which everything before led up to them, and everything afterwards derived from or were affected by them. Both World Wars come to mind, and I think Sept. 11 qualifies as a kairos. The biggest kairos moment to Tillich, as a theologian, was of course the Christ moment. And I would argue that, whether or not you are religious, that moment did catapult the world into an undeniable “before and after” - generating the BCE and CE dating conventions just as a start.

Maybe it’s just the Photon Belt

One thing I am finding these days is that chronos and kairos are increasingly converging in my life. I experience kairos moments when I am called away even briefly from my chronos patterns, and then the chronos and kairos moments begin to swirl around each other into a rhythmic dance which makes them increasingly interchangeable and downright blurry. Earlier I might have thought it was simply the yin-yang cycle of creativity - the right-brain opens to the Muse, then the left-brain captures, writing, editing, recording, then back to the Muse again, if she’ll have you. Or maybe it’s just ADHD, or going batty with age. But now I can nod to that sneaky god Caerus/Kairos as the leader of this fanciful dance.

Or maybe the real explanation is that we are all sailing through the Photon Belt at half a million miles an hour, and absorbing light and plasma hits from the sun and the cosmos like never before, and we are all changing the way we interact with time. That’s as good an explanation as any - are you feeling it too?

“All timing is divine.”

A wise old friend once told my younger self, as I was fretting about not getting a huge writing project done within some invented timeframe, “All timing is divine, dear.” Wow - that stopped me in my tracks. I was in rush mode. I doubted her. I pushed back. I kept on fretting. But years later, I see how right she was. Time after time, a perceived setback has turned into a reward. Now I believe in taking it further - to consciously transform my chronological moments into kairoi and touch the infinite. When I can, after I’ve done the dishes.

My newest release, “Edge of Town,” is out now. Check out the video on YouTube, and let me know what you think. My lovely nieces were instrumental in making this one.

My new album, Time Changes Everything, is available in CD or vinyl from my website, Katyaredpath.com, or at upcoming performances - I’ll keep you posted.

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I would love to be delving into the devas of creativity, sharing my ethereal processes with you.

But no.

First, apparently, I need to become some sort of digital polymath.

We all have to wear many hats.

Making music is technical in many ways, but nothing like the painstaking process of releasing it out into the ether. My brain is now crowded with loads of new apps, acronyms, and thought-forms. And just when I think I might’ve finally gotten the hang of it, something doesn’t work, and I have to switch up the whole shebang.

In the words of my producer, Matt Smith, “the process of releasing and promoting music is antithetical to creating it.” So right you are, Matt!

First, you have to register with BMI or ASCAP, the US copyright office, and a digital distributor - and if you want actual records (which I do), you also want a good, old-fashioned record manufacturer. You need to learn about metadata, ISRC and UPC codes, and the correct and incorrect versions of files for various digital platforms.

There’s no fudging - the digital overlords will spit it right out if it isn’t right. The same goes for visuals - photographs and cover art have to have the correct sizes and resolutions (usually different, depending on where). Animation and videos require more special treatments. Fussy, Fussy!

And social media - yikes. Each platform has its own culture and pace and skill set. For this you need to be a mini-movie-producer with music clips and videos at the ready - not to mention ideas - and hats!

Help! All I’m trying to do is put a little music into the world!

So I resorted to the obvious solution.

Hire a Twenty-Something

I still have to do plenty, but instead of hours staring at my hopelessly slow opposable thumbs, I get help from young people whose flying fingers whip off brilliantly sequenced riffs with embedded music and text in no time flat. They also helpfully point the way to things which require my attention, and things I can ignore.

And my special bonus - I get to collaborate with beloved daughters and nieces.

Whew. Now I actually have a bit of spare time to pick up my instruments, maybe do some gardening, have a swim, and get ready for the next gig.

Thank you for indulging me today.

(And if you’re wondering, yes, I bought that hat!)

Sneak Peek

My second single, “Edge of Town,”is coming soon (I hope! ). The process and exact date are still a mystery to me, since I had to switch digital distributors. The challenge is to “tease” the release date without knowing what it is.

—> Here’s a sneak preview of “Edge of Town” - hope you like it!

—> If you haven’t yet, please check out my daughter Nina Redpath’s beautiful animation of “Wave” on YouTube!

You can find links to my projects all in one place, here.

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It is also the loss of a beautiful and meaningful natural landscape, with generations of happy memories now marred by tragedy.

I’ve included pictures of my own house, as a reminder of how much our identities and memories are tucked away in our homes, and how it must feel for them to be washed away.

I wrote “Wave” as a kind of balm to the challenging times we are all living through. The wave is a metaphor, of course, but unfortunately high water is all too real right now. Challenges come in many forms, and I never expected this to be so apt at such a sad moment, so close to home.

If you’d like to help

The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country is a trusted organization with offices in Kerrville which vets all its recipients. You can donate here. (Communityfoundation.net)

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My first single, “Wave,” is out now!

I can hardly believe it.

Apparently you can stream it on hundreds of platforms, but I haven’t heard of most of them. So here’s a link to Spotify, and to Soundsplore, the disruptive new (free) music platform designed to support indie musicians like me.

Introducing Animation by Nina Redpath

And don’t miss the brilliant animated video made by my daughter, Nina Redpath. If you go to YouTube, under Katya Redpath Music, you can see it there.

“Wave” came to me organically, and sort of wrote itself. It is about the time we are all living through now - a time of immense change and overwhelm, and maybe, hopefully, evolution. The main message is hang on, we’re in this together, we can ride it out, waves come in all forms and they do ebb and flow.

My intention in putting out music is to offer a small bit of medicine for the world.

Go forth and stream!

Please, share this post and the links with anyone who might like it, and especially your children, or people who know how to stream the heck out of stuff and boost the algorithms by engaging and subscribing. That will help me, this late-blooming Boomer, to get a little buzz going for the song. Yes, I mean for the song! I’m feeling fine right now, thank you very much. I had no idea what a rush publishing a song would be!

And yes that’s me - no hairdo, as usual - at home in Vermont, celebrating in the middle of the day with a shot glass full of healthy & delicious maple syrup from our farm (ok maybe spiked a little).

Here’s a preview of Nina’s animation for “Wave”

You can find all my project links in one place, here.

Thanks so much for your encouragement and support.

It is amazing what a bit of time and collaboration will do. A few months ago, I held on tenderly to my new song creations, some finished, some rudimentary. I could never have imagined how they would blossom and grow if I could ever muster the nerve to let them go.

Art, including songwriting, is a lonely, mostly private, endeavor.

As they say, it takes guts to show your work. But one song, “Wave,” really kept badgering me to record it properly, in a studio. It was like the bored, bright kid who wants to go to school. It developed its own voice, and insisted that - no offense - just me and my guitar wasn’t going to cut it.

So I stepped into Six String Ranch, I shook producer Matt Smith’s hand, and I played several songs for him, including “Wave.” There was no demo, no bells & whistles, just me and my guitar. He immediately perceived the layers I was feeling behind my simple performance, and we started working on “Wave.” Finishing that took us about six sessions over a month’s time. As I learned to become more efficient with the studio process, we went on to record more than twelve pieces together.

Some recordings are completely organic, acoustic single-takes (these are my husband’s favorites - they sound most like “me” to him). Others have all the power of imagination that digital consoles, a treasure trove of instruments, and an experienced, imaginative producer can offer.

The songs are all different, and the recordings reflect the songs.

Luckily I was working with someone who wasn’t stuck in any single wheelhouse of sound, and who understood my wacky, wide-ranging influences. We incorporated classical elements, some soul, some jazz, some total 70’s vinyl throwback sounds, Latin and African percussion (at different times), whistles, even a fog horn. We experimented, and we cut things. We did a lot of laughing. You get the idea.

I may be making this sound easier than it was. Hearing yourself back on tape - cringey mistakes and all - is a deeply humbling experience. But I had to just keep going, and keep trying to make it better. The experience was terrifying, laborious, challenging, joyful, and silly and hilarious at times. And in the end, it was deeply affirming. Making a whole album of my own music - one which I actually like - was, as the saying goes, a dream come true.

New music coming soon.

The name of my album is Time Changes Everything. “Wave” is going to be my first release, with animation by my daughter, Nina Redpath.

Thanks for reading - more to come.

Other places to find me (with new profiles):

Facebook Katya Redpath Music

InstaGram @Katyaredpath

YouTube Katya Redpath Music

All the links in one place - www.katyaredpath.com/link-in-bio

One snowy December night back in Vermont, my daughters created real magic. They transformed a pair of white painter’s pants - the ones you get at the paint store - into a fabulous surprise.

They carved printing blocks by hand, mixed fabric paint, and printed guitars and moons all over the old painter’s pants. They were beautiful!

Let me explain.

These have been my favorite, affordable, go-to type of pants since I was a teenager. My kids knew this, and also that I have always had a passion for music, for the moon, and for everything in the sky.

I started playing guitar and piano in earnest when I was seven. I have collected songs all my life, and performed music in all sorts of styles, languages and places. When I was a teenager in northern Virginia I used to host backyard jams (wearing a plain white, earlier incarnation of those painter’s pants). My mother put up with all this, welcoming my school friends as well as people I’d pulled in off the street. She made sure that everyone stayed safe and fed, and that we didn’t blow a fuse off the porch. We came together almost every non-freezing weekend for many years, making a lot of noise at the cows that mooed back at us from across the fence.

We and the music evolved and grew. We gawked at the moon and wondered together at the world, and many of us went on to become professional musicians.

This was a deeply formative time for me musically. But as much as I had a passion for it, I put off my own music career. I went to college and graduate school. I got married and raised two strong young women. Our family worked and lived in several countries as well as the US, and we worked to revive a 250-year-old farm in Vermont (shameless plug for New Day Farm maple syrup).

When I moved to Austin with my husband John, fresh after what feels like several lifetimes, the creative vibe and pure potential of the place inspired me, and I went out and bought an electric guitar.

Then came the pants

As soon as I was presented with the magnificent pants, things started to move. I found welcoming jam sessions and master classes. I played at bars and Texas roadhouses and the storied stages of Antone’s and the Carousel Lounge. At various times I played rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, bass, and lead vocals and harmonies - just having a ball. I found myself playing in three bands all at once while also performing solo.

And I wore those pants to every show.

And then the real magic happened.

Those pants conjured up the spirit of my backyard teenage jams and flung that magic into my present reality. New, original songs started dropping down on me like manna. This all happened organically, and I did my best to capture the ideas before they wafted off to somebody else. I can hardly remember a more creative time.

Then a dear old friend from grade school, and those old teenage jams, introduced me to his buddy Matt Smith in Austin. Matt is the inspirational producer and musical polymath of Six-String Ranch. Matt had also been playing since he was a kid and came from Saratoga, NY, just down the road from me in Vermont. He understood my layered influences, and acted as guide, shaman of sound, and collaborator for an intense, highly productive round of recording. Together, we produced twelve songs for my debut solo album and EP.

So I turned a new leaf as a recording artist.

And it’s all thanks to my brilliant daughters and those magic painter’s pants.

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Welcome!

I am a new recording artist

I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s in what many of us believe was the greatest music era. For as long as I can remember, l've carried songs in my heart, through different homes, different countries, and different seasons. I’ve raised two daughters, been married for three decades, lived abroad, revitalized an old farm in Vermont (shameless plug in links below), and inexplicably, moved to Austin Texas.

After a lifetime of studying and performing other people’s music, I discovered I could write my own.

So I’m here because I have just finished making my debut album which is coming out this year. Thanks, Austin!

And I have stories! I want to invite you in to hear them. I will be posting here about the music I’ve been making, the creative process, and upcoming projects.

I am really excited to share this music with the world. I feel it speaks to the times we are living through now.

Starting soon, I’ll be releasing one song at a time.

The songs are eclectic and eccentric, like me, with a blend of folk, classic rock, international and mystical themes - and sometimes maybe even a little subversive.

I have excellent collaborators , and am proud of what we’ve done. More info to come!

I have wide-ranging interests.

Although my immediate goal is to help this new music be heard, I am also deeply interested in history, creativity, agriculture and earth-sky sciences, the universe (duh), the new ways science and metaphysics are converging, biography, and the human condition. So chances are, I will be ranging off-topic a bit.

Somehow, these seemingly disparate projects will coalesce - as the best stories so often do. And I hope to make some new friends in the process.

Let’s have some fun!

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Here’s where you can find me and my projects:

InstaGram Facebook New Day Farm Maple Syrup LinkedIn KatyaRedpath.music

all links in one place: