Katie Gregson-Macleod Provides A Moment of Tranquility on Her Tour (Live

Last Thursday, Katie Gregson-Macleod brought her Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early tour to Botanique in Brussels. Titled after the EP she released last year, the atmosphere of the show could be anticipated. The artist offered a show of emotional reprieve, a moment of quiet recollection in the middle of an unstable climate.

Gregson-Macleod is a Scottish artist who went on the radar with the vulnerable “complex.” Since then, she advanced in her career in ways even she couldn’t have imagined. Defined by guitar strings and piano along with vulnerable and cutting lyrics that surround the complexity of love, Gregson-Macleod has made a name for herself in the contemporary folk scene.

As we sat down backstage and talked of her perspective on success and ambition changing, her intellect showed she’s one of the strongest songwriters of our generation— and as the concert ensued, it was as clear as day that her voice is one of a kind.

Gregson-Macleod curates an encompassing, intimate vibe that makes you forget about the outside world for the duration of her show. Only accompanied by her keyboard and guitars, she performed with the same intensity of the time they were recorded. Gregson-Macleod has the capacity to put herself back in the mindset she was in when she wrote these tracks and expresses them as such.

Besides “complex” which had the crowd quietly singing along, “white lies” and “Teenage Love” were highlights that grounded the audience in the present moment. She told jokes between songs that enlightened the mood and showed she’s comfortable on stage.

Gregson-Macleod has the artistic skill of making everyone feel what she feels. Whether that is with her recordings or with her performances, she has a special energy that transmits through her craft.

ATC: I saw that you said about the title track of your EP that this was your realization that “contentment may require letting someone down, not living up to some great abstract aspiration that may have fueled me before.” I found that so interesting, especially in this current society of your success being tied to work. Do you find it difficult to reckon with this mindset?

GREGSON-MACLEOD: For sure. I think ambition and chasing success implies that you always have to want more. Inherently, when I wrote that song and when I was experiencing that EP, I was thinking a lot about that. What happens if I do achieve the things that I’ve always wanted? What feeling does that come with? Maybe it makes more sense for me to chase a feeling rather than objective milestones. That interested me as well because at that time, I’d experienced a lot of progress in my career really quickly, things I never thought I’d achieve or moments I never thought would happen to me.

After those all happened, I also had a period of time where I felt very disconnected from what I was doing in music. I want to feel proud of what I’m doing and I want for this progress and the success to come with the right feelings. Or else, I don’t know if it’s worth it. I think it is ambition and contentment, how do they marry? I’m sure many other artists as well, think about this a lot, because you do have to self promote and push and travel a lot. It’s the best job in the world in so many ways but also the better you’re doing doesn’t necessarily mean the happiest. It’s trying to reconfigure what success looks like to me.

ATC: There’s some really great lines in your songs, “Tricky to fill are the shoes I wore, taking them off at your bedroom door.” How do you find the inspiration to write these lyrics?

GREGSON-MACLEOD: It really depends. For that one, that really just came out. Sometimes you’re working for it a bit more. I wrote that a few years ago now, but I think at the moment I’m finding inspiration from everything. I’m feeling particularly spongy and absorbent right now. It’s really fun to look around, to observe. A lot of my lyrics come from jokes that I’ve told or someone’s told to me, or funny things that I see around me, things that friends of mine say. I journal quite a bit, which really helps. It gives your thoughts a place to dump and then you can understand what you’re saying a bit more. Films, books, music, everything really.

ATC: Do you have any other artists that inspire you?

GREGSON-MACLEOD: Too many to even name. My people that I will constantly refer back to as Bible for me, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Elliot Smith, Bob Dylan, so many people. People like get Bridget St John, Sybil Bayer, Nick Drake. The 60s and 70s. There’s just so many people that I look at as god tier, but then also every day, every week, I’m listening to contemporary artists or discovering new artists who will inspire me on that day. The last few weeks, I’ve been listening to quite a lot of Allegra Krieger. I’m listening to Cameron Winter, Dove Ellis, friends of mine, like Hector Shaw who’s supporting me tonight.

I do think that I’m constantly inspired by other people. When you have songs on your rotation that does seep in a little bit. One reference is that for the last few months I’ve been listening to almost exclusively to jazz standards. It’s just something about the winter. It feels romantic and wintery and cozy. For a whole month, everywhere I was going, everywhere I was driving and every time I was pottering about the house, I had on my playlist of Chet Baker, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Julie London standards. That really seeped into my songwriting for a while.

ATC: You’ve written in detail about different aspects and facets of love. Is it like the emotion that inspires you most, or is it something that is more like where you’re at in life?

GREGSON-MACLEOD: I think it’s the biggest theme. It depends on the time. There are times when I’ve been in relationships and I haven’t written much about the relationship itself, written about other things, but it underlines a lot of what I’m talking about. When you’re falling in love or when you’re going through a heartbreak, those two extreme circumstances, when you’re in them it’s all you think about. When I’m falling in love, sometimes I can’t write very well about it. I’m very rarely writing good songs about falling in love, but it’s all you want to write about. Then when it’s heartbreak, it’s all you can express sometimes. It’s all encompassing. I’ve got an album coming out at the end of this year, my debut album. I’ve got songs about friends, songs about family, songs about the music industry, songs that are not even about me at all, and all these different things.

ATC: I was gonna ask if there’s an album in the works because I was listening to the EP this morning again and I was so curious about how an album would sound. I feel like, exactly as you described it, there would be so many subjects.

GREGSON-MACLEOD: When it’s the debut album especially, you’re really taking into account so many different chapters of your life. For the next album I’ll be writing it for a year or two. Maybe I’ll do some retrospective stuff, but it will be very much me right now. Whereas this album, I was writing this at 16. It ended up being that the oldest song is only a few years old. It’s funny, I thought it would have a way more cohesive narrative thread. I thought it’d be all about one thing and it’s about so many different things but they all are connected, which I’ve enjoyed figuring out. There’s a lot of themes, lyrical threads, it’s all about different things. That was interesting and hard to deal with. I was like, “Oh, is this gonna make sense? It makes sense to me as a body of work, but is it gonna make sense to people?”

ATC: I want to talk about the last track on the EP, “Mosh Pit.” It has such a delicate view of love. When writing, is it like collecting moments while living the moment, or is it more like looking back?

GREGSON-MACLEOD: It really depends on the song. That EP and that song specifically was vignettes of moments. It’s my favorite song on the EP. It’s very like how love feels. When I try to write about love, it comes to me with snapshots of moments and memories. It’s flicking through a memory file, that’s what that song feels like to me. It’s little captured moments and scenes that I’m moving through, which is how I found it easiest to write about love at the time.

It’s hard to capture in any big expressions how it feels but that first vignette about the moshpit itself hones in on a certain aspect of love. The next verse, which is sitting in the garden, that whole verse highlights a different side of love and its comfort. Each one has a different association for me, but I show without telling, which is what I want to do in that song. Sometimes I’ll take a much more retrospective or grand view of it. It really depends. I think it’s really fun to do both though. It’s intricate to collect moments and freedom into song. It feels like you’re honoring it in a nice way.

ATC: It’s so nice because it’s these little moments we tend to forget through time. To have something artistic that reminds us is amazing. Do you get nervous before going on stage?

GREGSON-MACLEOD: Not really, no. I can get nervous after the gig. Sometimes I get nervous in a different way. I won’t necessarily feel stage fright or nervous about going on, but I’ll maybe get a bit after the show. I I get nervous when I’m doing a special gig that’s not my own stuff. I’ve done gigs where I’ve played covers of people’s stuff. That’s nerve wracking because it’s not your material. With my old stuff, it’s very relaxed up there.

ATC: Who would you recommend your music to?

GREGSON-MACLEOD: Oh, that’s a great question. It’s becoming less and less clear to me. I feel like this EP could appeal to anyone. It’s weirdly nostalgic. As we said before, it’s encapsulating love through moments that you’re flicking through in your memory. I think that anyone who is falling in love, or has been in love, or is uninterested in love as well, can probably enjoy that. This album that is coming at the end of this year, it’s in transit. Somebody in transit, somebody who is either going through a change in their life, expecting change or unsure what’s coming next, or looking back at the past and trying to make sense of it. That’s what the album feels like to me, in many ways.

I think annoying, loud, obnoxious and overthinking young women would love it. For no reason in particular (laughs). Women, gays and theys. I hope it has something for everyone. The album really does. It’s got humor and deep melancholy, yearning and reflection.

ATC: What hopes do you have for this year?

GREGSON-MACLEOD: At the end of last year, I did a lot of touring and I’m touring now as well. I’m really enjoying it at the moment, which I haven’t always. I had not found it easy, but I’d like to do a lot more touring, which I’m doing at the beginning of this year. Touring and connecting with more people in person, because I think that the internet is becoming more and more volatile. It becomes less and less reliable and less human. The lesser we have between two humans, the better.

I want to write a lot. At the beginning of the year, I don’t really do resolutions but I was thinking about the year, and I want to make sure that I’m writing all the time even when I don’t even feel like it. This is not just songs, just expressing how I feel at that moment because it’s something that I can forget to do in a day. After I’ve collected notes of things and after I express myself in that way, everything feels manageable and inspiring.

I’m gonna write my second album this year. I’m gonna put out my debut album. It feels like an exciting time. I had to be quite patient for years. You’re always writing and making things in the background but this year, I’ll be able to connect with people with that music, which I’m so excited about.