ITS Home Edition: Kat Cunning

highly recommend and will not admit to having done. Yeah, I did it. The home edition of the show is all about letting you inside the creative process of musicians. During lockdown, and Kat talked with our Quarantine correspondent Jordan Runtog about why, as a dancer turned musician, they love finding rhythm within melody. Cat also offered Jordan's some advice on how to get over his fear of dancing, which comes down to deciding that looking stupid is cool and

just wiggling around. I think we can all agree these are words to live by. So if you enjoy this episode, be sure to check out the I Heart Radio podcast that Jordan's hosts when he's not not dancing. It's called Rivals, Music's Greatest Feuds, and it's available wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody, My name is Jordan Runtug, but enough about me. My guest today is an actor, singer, songwriter, performer, dancer. It's hard to think of things they're not good at.

You've seen them on the Deuce with James Franco and also the Netflix series Trinkets. But they're emotionally raw dance anthems like broken Heart and Stay on the Line earned them one to Watch status from the BBC. The Relentless new singles Super Know about Tiger's Blood is out now and their first EP is on the Way. I'm so happy to welcome Cat Kunn and Cat thank you so much for taking the time today. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. How does life in

Lockdown find you today? I mean to be honest, it's a roller coaster, but it's also kind of great. I kind of love Lockdown. I was always gonna say, you do a million different things. Has Quarantine given you a chance to like catch your breath? Or you still find yourself pretty busy? It's definitely given me a bit of a chance to catch my breath. Like I'm I'm still busy. I still have projects and still writing and stuff, but it's like cut in half at least, and it's been

really nice to catch up with my emotional life. I sort of think of lockdown as like adult day care. Your only job is to get through the day, and I like be real. A lot of my like songwriting comes from childhood memories and stuff when you just have the time to take in the day. So I think this is pretty valuable except for, you know, all the tragedy that comes with it. I was gonna say, are you more of a homebody? Like do you get your

inspiration more from from looking inward than looking outward? I do. I think that most people find that pretty surprising because I am very outgoing and I'm very very um People ignite me, like I like to say that when I'm around people, they charge my battery, and I get like, I can't help but be responsive to people, you know what I mean. And that's why I love performing, because there's a real connection there and it puts so much life in me and and I kind of can't stop.

It's hard to get me to leave a party. With that being said, I have to make myself, uh, spend time with myself because I am really there's a really big side of me that's introverted, and that's where most of my art comes from. And now you're a dancer, which I emphatically am not. In fact, I've been dumped on the dance floor because I am so bad of a dancer. But I'm told that dancing is very rhythm based. Does does your dancing training factor in your song right

and all? Do do you like focus on a strong beat first and go from there or not really overlap? Actually I think that I'm a total anomaly. I think you're right to ask that question. But I've always felt more comfortable dancing to stuff that doesn't like sort of give me a beat. I love to hear a rhythm within a melody and like to surprise my self a

little bit. So stuff that's really beat heavy or like dance music, for example, is actually harder for me to get into because it's just like you want to jump up and down to it, and that's kind of all you see in here. I really like stuff that's like sort of groovy or imaginative like James Blake is honestly my favorite thing to dance too. There's just all these like production treats that make me just want to dance

forever and be and my feels. Um. But that being said, my relationship to time with music does really influence my writing. What are you working on now that now that you're sort of in its self imposed sort of like a much smaller workshop, shall I say, just sort of your home? Is it a little residency? Yeah, yeah, exactly? Has that

has that impacted the way that you approach right? Although strangely, um, I think, you know, writing and music is actually fairly new for me because it had spent most of my life dancing. And I think my first round of writing was super introverted, introverted and super personal, um because the nature of going into a studio with a person you've never been before and also having like a lifetime of things to say come out in one session. I just felt very personal and vulnerable to me. And so that

whole first round was just like, yeah, really intimate. And now that I'm at home writing and I've spent a little more time, I actually feel like I'm catching up to my life's experience having gotten to perform on stage and see what like, um, what performing a pop song for two thousand people can feel like. So I'm weirdly like allowing myself to write bigger, poppier songs now that

I'm at my house alone. It's it's really backwards because it takes the pressure off though it is not that person there that you have to like, actually you can. It's much easier to imagine these things I I imagine at least than actually have to like sing what you said, like your your emotions and your past feelings and traumas to this other person there with all the recording equipment and headphones on, and very imagine sterile as opposed to being in your nice home, and it's something that you

can just build up from the ground up there. Yeah, and also kind of feeling like the stakes are lower, like some of our best some of our favorite pop songs are literally just about feeling happy or sad, you know what I mean. And I've just been able to like expect nothing one going into a zoom session and then like write a song that I really love and

want to dance too. Or maybe it just has to do with having the time and rest in order to have a lot of energy go into a song instead of having to like fit it into a tour schedule, you know what I mean. Yeah, I don't know what it is, but I've I feel like I'm like catching up to myself and some of the things that I've always said I wanted to do are just like happening in my sessions right now. Like the whole first iteration, like I said, is like ballads that we speed up

like they were all written with one instrument. Um Me and Justin Parker could write ballads all freaking day. But now I feel like a couple of the songs I've written recently feel like the Justin timber like that I've always wanted to be And I'm excited. Yeah, I get

some of that, like Neptunes vibe on it. Yeah, because there's like there's I feel like there are really two parts of me as an artist, and one of them is like I'm a warrior and I'm out there and I'm willing to be vulnerable and brave and say the thing that's hard to say. But then the other side of me is like I really just want to dance and be ratchet and like move my butt and we need to I need to make a budio work that somehow it's cohesive and does both of these things. Well,

you said, Warrior. That leads me into I want to talk to you about Supernova. The song and the video. The video is absolutely stunning, and you are this this warrior figure. You're a night in shining armor in a way. Uh, talk to me a little bit about what that song means to and how the video sort of expresses that. I mean, the video was like really a dream come

true to collaborate on. I I when I got the treatments for Supernova from all of the directors that's admitted, I was just crying because I was like, this is the side of me that's never been validated, that I somehow I was capable of articulating through the song writing and through my own like mini treatment for the video, and to have free people who are so good at

what they do right, really really great treatments. I could have picked any of them, showing me as the prince in my own story after living a whole life of being told like you could never be masculine if you tried, you're the epitome of femininity or a pin up girl, like all of these things that have, like I felt,

been imposed on me. It was really cool to like actively yes, like have my very same female body but put it in this context that felt really strong and just like felt like me and felt like I was seen. And the song itself is not just an expression of masculinity. It's an expression of my role in love. I feel like when I am starting to fall in love with someone, I feel like I'm so freaking powerful and I and the song is also like to laugh at myself too.

It's like the lyric Tiger's Blood is a shoutout to Charlie Sheen and how he's in his interviews and he's like, he's like, I got Tiger's Blooded to me, I could do anything. I got Tiger's lad. I'm like, no, that those are drugs, bro, And so for me, um, the song is sort of about how love is a drug that makes me feel willing to do anything for somebody, and it makes me feel like a prince and a warrior, even if all I have to offer is that sentiment alone.

But yeah, I wrote it for a girl who was sort of breaking my heart and I knew that she wasn't going to be able to be a good partner to me, but I was just falling and I wrote it on a day issue was not texting me back, And the whole vocal is from the demo that day on a pretty shitty mike. I mean, they are like background harmonies and stuff that I did later, but the whole lead is from the day I wrote the song.

And a lot of my songs end up being that way because I feel like when the words are fresh, I get out of my own way when it comes to thinking technically about how to sing, and I just say the words, and the words are the most important part to me, um, and they are like little treats in this song to like the lyrics, to you be the dagger that I don't pull out. That is a way of saying, obviously like I'm willing to let you kill me, which is a very Romeo esthetic, and or

break my heart. But it also one of the really special nights with this girl. I got a tattoo impulsively and it's of a dagger. I was gonna say that's in the video too, right, Yah. Yeah, And I'm very happy to say that I told her I was putting this song out and she said she liked it, and so that's I mean, I so I imagine you you are a romantic. Do you agree with the with the old saying it's better to have loved and lost than never never loved at all. Yeah, that's totally what the

song is about. And I think that, like, culturally right now, I think we're in a moment of reckoning, when we're realizing that we need to stand up for what we care about and some things need to change, Like this whole pandemic has given us a social chance to catch up with ourselves and what our values are. But prior

to that, I think everybody was a little overworked. And uh, I feel like the statement of our culture and our generation right now, if the Romans were a romantic and willing to do anything for love, we're kind of like zannied out and it's like not cool, it's a care I'm just like so extra. Maybe this is all my defense statement for doing anything for love, But I just

I think it's worth it to care. I think it's worth it to look dumb, worth it to look foolish, Like there's so much on the other side of trying for what you believe in and that's also what pop music is to me. When I was a kid, I used to frown on pop music. I was like, it's so crazy. They're so intense, like oh my god. And now I realized there's so much courage and not acting like you're too smart for something and saying exactly what you need to say and not an extra word more

than that. You know, what did you listen to as a kid? Oh man, It's all over the place. And I also like had a lot of illegally downloaded music and mix tapes, so I know that half of the songs that really influenced me, I'm I don't even remember which artists they were, but I was kind of like, as a young kid, I was really into country, which I think is coming back full circle in terms of

my appreciation for lyric. I'm not super into the country aesthetic in the pop world, but I really appreciate that they're always really thorough stories and really simple lyrics. And then I got really into indie cool stuff, like I was into stuff like Neutral, Malk Hotel and fright Eyes because frid Eyes is another great example of somebody who's just like always vulnerably telling a story. And having like

really intentional lyrics. And then when I went to college, I discovered soul and R and B and like, and prior to that, through dance classes, I was really inspired by the Justified album. I danced to that album for like every jazz class, and it definitely changed my life. Like fully, Crimeer River is like one of my favorite songs ever. And then yeah, the introduction of like Soliman, R and B kind of totally changed my life. I

thought I wanted to do that fully. And then I discovered pop covering pop in a dance company and realized that when I sing a pop song, it sounds totally different. And that was my realization that I had an into these songs, that they're just really freaking good songs that can live with a million different esthetics. Getting back to what you're saying earlier about sort of like being the

prince in your own story. I loved your song broken Heart, which I mean it challenges this this idea where you know, I feel like women and culture are portrayed and obviously usually sort of praise for being this fragile naive, and then you have the song broken Up where it's like I'm not a China Doll, but we all have scars in a hard I thought that was a really powerful message. Just wanted to ask you more about that song, as

I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. That song also just like flew out of me, but it did come from a totally different side of things, so like most of my writing experiences have been more on the Justin Parker's side of things, where I'm in the studio, He's making a lick on the piano and I'm just like fully writing a lyric and feeling my feelings. I wrote Broken Heart with John Martin and Michelle Zitron in Sweden,

and there it was totally different. Like I walked into their studio and everything was like leopard print and like neon, and it was just like so poppy and they were just like playing the chords and jumping up and down and it was just so fun. And the lyric came out of me just really quickly, and it was definitely more rhythm based and less like super personal story based.

But I was like, I love singing this and the song itself and the verses is about like seeing someone in a bar and encouraging them to get about their chair and dance, which has been a theme in my real life experiences with people I date, because I just really loved to dance, and I think everyone can dance. That's the other thing I love about writing a sort of dance song is like, get out there and do

whatever is weird. But I do want to know what were you talking about getting dumped on the dance floor? I am I was gonna ask you for this. I am absolutely petrified of dancing. I don't know what it is. If it's just acteel inhibited, I'm worried it's this class of thing you're word you're gonna I don't know what to do. I want to see the list of things that's expected. What my options? Yeah? Right, Like I just I just feel like I'm gonna look stupid. I don't

know what to do. I need, you know, I gotta go home and work on this for six weeks before and then by that point the moments passed, you know. Yes, I think the main thing is deciding that looking stupid is cool. What is the stupidest thing you could do? Just it's all just your limbs and a torso and a head, Like you can't go wrong unless you're I don't know, hurting yourself. Like just wiggle around, shake a leg, do your thing. There's no right way do you do

you like David Byrne, Yeah, I do. From Talking Head. I was lucky enough to speak to him once and I asked him like, you know, I can't dance, but you are like kind of one of my dance heroes because you just totally do your own thing and you look so weird. Asking him that too, like what do you how do you get to that place? Mentally? I just can't let go? And he kinda said the same thing. Yeah. I was revisiting Tommy Ork video the other day and

I was like, you're such a freak. I love it. Also, just I think the main thing when dancing don't put your if you're afraid to dance, don't put yourself in a situation on a dance floor at a club. First, put a track on in your house and like as a free dance lesson really quick. Here's one motivator. Just think of your joints as having a texture. Are your joints liquid or are your joints crackers? And just play with them. Just get yourself to move without thinking about

whether you look cool or not. It's fun. You know, I've never heard that. Yeah, I just blew your mind. Yeah, I know, seriously, that's like you know, I mean, well, yeah, the the whole, the whole dumping thing that was like fifteen years old. I'd say, like the winter ball in high school. So you know, yeah exactly, Oh yeah, very much. We all have scars and a broken heart. I was I was going to say, that's why that song resonated

with me so much. Obviously, I love it. Well. Another one of my favorite songs of yours, For the Love, such a power for song. I mean, again, somebody, it's a through line in so many of your song and he's nothing more important than love. And such a brave song too. I mean it really did come from such a personal place. What's that song mean to? You can

tell me a little bit about where that came from. Yeah, for the Love is another one that I just wrote with Justin Parker while he was just getting things ready and I just wrote the whole song in like ten minutes. Quietly, I love it when people leave me alone in the studio because like sometimes you get into a session and people like, how are you do you like this? Cool, cool, cool, and I literally just like bye, and I write the lyric and then I come back with it, and this

one just fell out of me. I guess it was a story that I needed to tell. I tend to take like ten years to process something and then it just comes out in a poem. Um, but this song is about my coming out story growing up as someone who was really conservative and religious, but then my mom came out as gay before me. It's like a very circular or sort of money story that is easiest to

express through a poem. Actually, basically, I then I came out years later after judging her for her life choices, and understood her a lot better and appreciate her so much more for living her own life and doing what she needed to do instead of quote unquote putting her kids first, you know, holding back for an image or for convenience. And then the second half of the story that's pretty heartbreaking is that my mom's partner, who she was with for eleven years, passed away due to cancer.

And that happened the day before gay marriage became legal in New York. And that was one of my first summers in New York and one of my first Pride Parade experiences. So it's just really a story of how like tragedy and love and growth are always connected. And yeah, the bridge I've known love that's wider than the space in the middle where it's painted red. That was meant

to show that the world is so conservative. I know love that's stronger than that, and I believe that fear is weaker than love, just like the magazine read shouting out the magazine that influenced me when I was little, which I don't. I think that part's kind of hard to explain, but basically, I saw a magazine clipping when I was little that was a religious magazine clipping that I held onto for a really long time, and I was really religious at the time, but it was actually

sort of secular. It was literally just about how like God's love is stronger than your fear. And it was cool to tie that back in the end of the song. Although I had grown from those beliefs, and although I had seen so much pain and tragedy and change, that sentiment was true. I appreciate having that in a song

because it's about how everything goes together. It was cool to realize and cool to say that, um coming from a place where I was so religious and then growing through all this life, and that that religious sentiment still really spoke to me. And that was a way for me to say that I understand the people come from all different types of backgrounds, and I hope that we all can appreciate each other and educate each other and get closer and closer to mutual acceptance. It's a beautiful message.

I saw that you were at Pride this year. It must have been a different kind of Pride this year, in the middle of a pandemic. How how was that though, Well, it wasn't the corporate Pride. I have to look up the exact title. I can't remember right now, but it was amazing. It was I will never go to corporate pred again. It was just people going out and protesting and there were no frills, there was no Yahoo float, and yeah, it was really beautifully organized and respectful given

that it's pandemic. And then at the end of the parade there was a huge police breakout and people were being maced and cop cars were getting knocked down, and it was so crazy that they couldn't spend one day letting us have this token of a of a parade, like it was so amazing that you ripped the veneer off of it, that like corporate approval veneer. They had

to show their two colors. It was really scary, and given everything with Black Lives Matter and everything, people were kind of organized and well versed, and you know, white people were to the front. But it was very scary. I it was like, this is real. People are going to get hurt. And different quadrants of the parade were, you know, organizing themselves differently, and there was an actual

vogue battle afterwards. The cops finally left and there was a beautiful vogue battle and there was like one DJ at the back of a truck and everyone was dancing. It was just like so inspiring and exciting to see that we don't need any of the extra stuff. We just need to gather and we need music, and we

need we need dance, and we need each other. I just saw they dedicated the park on the East River to Marcia P. Johnson, I think a couple of days ago actually, which is incredible that I hope more people know know about her. He was on her birthday, right. I hope it would be so cool. I think so yeah. I hope. So yeah, it's an amazing documentary. I think it's called The Death in Life of Marsha P. Johnson. That was on Netflix for anyone who wants to learn more.

Absolutely incredible for moving, inspirational story. Ye, speaking of New York City, you're in the Deuce taking place in seventies New York Times Square back when that was you know, the opening scene of Shaft or something, scary place full of prostitutes. Do you relate to that era? You a big classic rock seventies. My friends actually tell me that I am generation fluid. They're like sort of mocking me.

But now I think that I relate to like any time other than now, I love to live in the nineteen twenties and nineteen forties, the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, like really all you can take me all the way back to the four hundreds. Really, But yes, the seventies, I saw you in the Nights. But I will say that the seventies and like imagery from the seventies film as well, is definitely what made

me move to New York. You know, when I was a little kid, like three years old, watching White Knights with Bora CoV and Gregory Hines. Uh, or like the Turning Point all these old dance movies where people are like broke and killing themselves with their art. My family tells me that I was like this is beautiful when I was me and they were like, oh no, uh

so I definitely followed my arrow. They also tell me that I pointed out all of the people that were clearly hookers strippers, and I feel like I've found a way to that aesthetic. I've actualized my celebration of those things in my life as well. I was like watching Milan Rouge and I was like, oh, they're so beautiful, mom, their princesses, And she was like, oh my god. Well you're a big film buff, right, Like I think I

read that you were kind of giving yourself. You're a self guided uh cinema studies class and in lockdown right, Like you've been watching a lot of films I was. I was catching up for a while. I haven't watched any TV recently because I've just I guess, doing life stuff, doing press for Supernova and stuff. But I really really love a great film. I don't know a lot about anything.

I'm not a facts person. I'm like so bad when it comes to like telling you all the facts about anything, really, but I am a feelings person and when I love a movie, I love it from the inside out. Like Wizard of Oz was my favorite movie when I was a little kid, and I had every barbie of every character and the ripped last revised in nineteen thirty nine, memorize the whole thing, talked to myself every day in the Wizard of Oz language. So yeah, when I love something,

I love it a lot. I don't know why I'm thinking of this right now, but have you ever seen The Umbrellas of Scherburg. I have not. It's this incredible Jacques Demi movie from nineteen sixty four with Kathy de Neuve, and I forget the the other person's name in it, but it is. It's it's all sung. It's which you think kind of after a while, I would be like, okay, okay, okay, but it is so beautifully shot. The melodies are absolutely amazing. It's all the sort of jazzy early sixties pop stuff.

I really think you'd like it. I don't know why, but I just have this vibe. I think you you really would enjoy it, so if you get a chance, check it out. I have to check it out. Has there been any sort of silver lining for the pandemic for you at all? I mean, if you like, develop any new skills or hobbies or anything like that. I think I've just written better songs than I've written in a while, and I have changed my life drastically. I went through an intense breakup with somebody I was with

for five years. But you know, everything is for the best, and it's kind of great that it's a pressure cooker and you you make choices instead of waiting for them to happen ten years down the line when you're deeper into things you don't want to be in, you know, And um, I have decided to come hang out in l A. And I had unemployment checks that I could donate Black Lives Matter organizations. So there's been a lot of a lot of silver linings, I think. And I

really needed this. I really wanted to go on tour. I was about to open for ally X, and I had this really beautiful final rehearsal with the people in my project, and I'll never forget I walked into the rehearsal and They're like Hey, are you guys like nervous, like this seems like this isn't gonna happen, or like is it smart for us to go on tour? And I was like, no, bro, We're doing this. Like if there's two people in the audience, we're gonna play the

best show ever. And then we had a really great rehearsal and we played this song so well and with so much heart. And then I got a call right after from my manager and they were like, yeah, this is canceled. Um, but it was great. I went out with a little bang and um. And I think I needed the break more than I needed the tour. I needed a second to like get my ducks in order

for all the big stuff that's going to happen. And I've been really lucky to have releases during this time, which makes me feel like, you know, the world is still trucking along, and I'm confident or hopeful at least that I think will come out of this with better ideas than we would have had in our overworked day to day world. Absolutely a lot more conscientious choices, much more considered choices. I agree. Yeah, I think all the change that's happened has been not all the change obviously,

like you know, people are dying. It's a pandemic, but a lot of the social change is important. Regrowth and every time things are every time there's destruction, like seeds get spread in a hurricane. You know. My last question I always ask at the end of these shows, if you could snap your fingers and have everything go back to the way it was pre pandemic. Everything's over. You can do whatever you want. What's the first thing that you would do? Trips, you want to take people, you

want to hug. What would you do? Oh, my freaking god, that's easy. I would go to the Wood. It's on a Wednesday, which is a lesbian party, and I would dance so hard. I would take my shirt off. I would have like a vrawn and stuff, but I would be twerking. I would sweat and tell four am. I would dance on all my friends. I would make out with so many strangers, and uh, I'd eat pizza afterwards. That is the most immediate, and I would argue, probably the best answer we've had. Thank you so so much,

Thank you so much. It's god a pleasure. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio Home Edition, a production of high Heart Radio. For more episodes of Inside the Studio and other shows from my heart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast