Kate MacLeod’s Mind the Gap Performs in Monterey August 12

On Saturday, August 12, Kate MacLeod’s Mind the Gap will perform at The Highland Center in Monterey.  The show is part of the Highland County Arts Council’s Second Saturday @ 7 concert series.

“My music that I perform generally fits in the broad term of americana or new traditional for the reason that I write very traditional sounding music,” says MacLeod.  “Some of my songs sound very old, like early country or bluegrass.  Some of my songs have been recorded by bluegrass artists for years.  Molly O’Brien’s recorded my songs.  Laurie Lewis, she’s about to release a song of mine on her upcoming recording, and I do pull though from all the styles that I’ve studied.  I’ve played Celtic music for years and I have a classical base from my childhood.  So, I’m a little eclectic, but I love the early American traditional music and that always seems to come across in my writing somehow.”

music cut – “The Train Across The Great Salt Lake”

“I got into this late,” says MacLeod. “I was doing other things for a living and I had a family, I raised three children, and I had been performing in my region for a long time.  I lived in Salt Lake City for many years.  Well, backtrack to that, I’m originally from Maryland and I grew up in Maryland and I moved to Salt Lake City to study violin making many years ago and I ended up working at the school for a long time.  And I was raising my three kids, but the radio station kept having me in to sing my songs and people in my area were singing my songs.  So, I decided I’d see how much fun I could have with that.  So, its just snowballed a little bit and now I’m playing all over the country and I have been doing that for a good decade or so.”

music cut — “Pick, Pick Apples”

“Those of us who play traditional music, we like to carry that forward,” says MacLeod.  “It’s a huge part of our American culture.   As a melting pot also, music that came all over the world into our country and we like to keep that alive and my own songs definitely are derivative of that.  You can hear that in the songs that I sing of my own.   Because of my roots in the east and the fact that I live there half time now, I’m looking after my mother in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, she’s 97 and I help her out quite a bit, and I’ve relocated myself quite a bit in the east and I do write songs about that.  I have songs about Maryland.  I have a song about Virginia and I’ll sing it that night.”

Kate MacLeod’s Mind the Gap performs at The Highland Center at 7pm on Saturday, August 12, 2023.   The concert is free and donations will be accepted to benefit the Highland County Arts Council.  The performance is the annual Elizabeth and Mary Hille McCoy Memorial Concert.

The concert follows the annual Taste of Highland dinner fundraiser for The Highland Center.  Tickets must be purchased in advance for the dinner.  For information about Taste of Highland, call 540-468-1922 or visit www.thehighlandcenter.org/tasteofhighland

The Highland County Arts Council is a supporter of Allegheny Mountain Radio.