Blues
SATE Discusses Her New Album, ‘The Fool,’ Digital Tarot Collages, and Comic Books! [w/ Audio]
We recently connected with SATE, a Toronto-based killer vocalist, energetic live performer, and spiritual entity, to discuss her new body of music, ‘The Fool.’ It’s a body of music five years in the making and was produced by Hill Kourkoutis.
SATE, a Toronto-based killer vocalist, energetic live performer, and spiritual entity, has released a new body of music unto the world. The new album is aptly named after the hero of the Tarot deck, The Fool. It’s a body of music five years in the making and was produced by Hill Kourkoutis. The Fool is a rallying cry for anyone who has ever dared to dream and strive towards embracing their most fabulous self. The album is bluesy and boozy, filled with ferocious soulful wails, relentless guitars, pulsating organs, and ‘greasy grooves!’ It’s well worth a listen!
SATE herself designed all album and single artworks. The artwork brings the Tarot deck to life with the personification of “Howler” representing The Empress, “Nobody,” representing Strength, and “The Fool.” A work of living art, The Fool links the album’s underlying themes to SATE’s unwavering faith in the universe. It also reflects the album’s journey from the beginning to the end; what has been and what is.
Along with the album’s recent release, there is also SATE’s new short film, directed by Andrew Hamilton, who previously worked with Drake. It is a tale about trusting in the universe and embracing life’s struggles and the journey laid out for all of us.
Our heartfelt thanks to SATE for taking a healthy chunk out of her afternoon a few weeks ago to field a few questions for V13 via Zoom. The audio is available here if you’d prefer to hear her answers in real-time.
So listen, it saddens me that I haven’t been able to see you live in the past couple of years. When you find something good locally that you know you’re going to have a good time at, you kind of want to go back and see that thing over and over again. And, well, you know…
SATE: “I’m that thing?”
You’re that thing. And I have not been able to see that thing live, and it’s a bummer.
“Yeah. It’s been a time, huh?”
Yep. Have you been able to perform at all? Have you done anything in front of a computer? Have you been in front of people?
“It’s been rough. I’ve been around people. I did the Luminato show. That was the first time that I had been with my band playing since November of 2019. It’s crazy.”
You still like to go out and see live music, right? You’ll go out and see performers?
“There hasn’t really been anything, though.”
In normal times. You were a show-goer, right?
“Oh yeah. Hell yeah!”
So what was the last thing you saw live before the world broke?”
“Oh my God, I honestly can’t even remember. Like, what is live? I can’t even process that. It’s weird that I’ve grown accustomed to this (motions to her surroundings) where I don’t see live music. How adaptable we are, oof!“
Maybe a better question for you is what is live going to look like? Are you going to perform in the next year or two, and how is that going to go for you?
“I really would love to. I think what has kind of happened is there has been an expansion; there’s been an accessibility created around live, or just around performance. I know that when I get back on stage doing shows that I will be factoring in making the shows accessible so that it’s not just attendees. That accessibility factor is what live will look like. I honestly don’t know; I’m not a future-teller. I feel like I sound hopeless, and I’m not hopeless at all; I just don’t know. I’m looking forward to it because I think there are so many possibilities of what it will look like. That could be really exciting.”
I haven’t gone to anything yet. I just asked to do a show a few weeks ago in November, and honestly, I don’t know if I want to do it. I don’t know if I want to drive to Toronto, find parking, get into the venue, and then just kind of stand like this (stoic with arms crossed).
“I know. And that’s really what breaks my heart. I want to be on stage, and I want people to interact with one another, with me, and the sweat. All of that! And it’s like it’s not allowed.”
I guess I could sit in a seat and watch you at the Horseshoe…
“No! God no! Please don’t do that.”
So how have you been coping with not being able to perform live? That’s like in your blood, and it’s just sort of been taken off the playing field. That’s got to feel weird.
“Yeah, it’s definitely been a journey. With everything, that’s been my go-to; I’m going to perform; I’m going to a show; I can even go and see my friends. I can go and see bands. I’ve got that option. I can go to the gym. Things that have just been ripped out of our lives and are pivoting. At least before, when I didn’t feel like going to the gym, I could work out at home. But now I’m forced to not go to the gym. So it’s now navigating around that. And then all of these other things, and the passing of my mom.
Being in a place where I’m just sitting in a lot, just sitting and contemplating and reflecting. The sitting in a lot which has been beautiful, and it’s been challenging. I’m really grateful for a lot that has come out of it. When you are going through something, and you don’t see the end, and you don’t see anything, it’s like, fuck, this is never going to feel better. This is shitty. But you know that you will get through it. We always get through it.”
Your mom died during the pandemic, right?
“Yep. In August.”
Me too, in June.
“Yeah. So you know.”
That was just surreal. No hugging. We had to fight to get a frigging viewing. It was just strange.
“Yeah. Just like an upside-down world. The trauma that so many around the globe have endured, whether or not they have lost people who have transitioned or not, the trauma of losing social contact, it’s just been fucking weird.”
Exactly. Not a lot of closure for my mom’s friends either. You could have so few people there that we found ourselves having to select people who could come and who couldn’t. It was so whacked.
“Exactly. We wanted to do a celebration, but it was like we could only have 50 people there, and that’s just our family. That’s ridiculous. Finally, we did do something where we streamed it online, and that was really surreal because, for the entire year, it was like ‘she’s gone,’ but it didn’t really click and sink in until we gathered and could hear peoples stories. And to be with other people and not just be with my sister and her husband, my family processing this. It was processing it with my mom’s family and her chosen people.”
So let’s get onto The Fool. Let’s talk about this thing that you are putting out into the world. Would you call this a culling? Is this a collection of songs? Or is this all-new material that you are putting out front and center?
“No, this is new. I started recording it in 2018. It hasn’t been put out on vinyl or CD or whatever. It hasn’t been put out, but I have played some of the songs live. A few of them, but it hasn’t been put out. So when I recorded it, we mixed and mastered it and put out ‘Dirty Little Lie’ in 2019, and then there was something inside me that was saying I can’t put this out as it is. I’m not sure; there was something needed. I was unsure about it. And so, during the pandemic, we went back in and reworked a bunch of songs and then added more stuff; we added interludes and whatnot. There were just so many changes, and it brought a whole other energy to it. So no, it’s not a culling; it’s new.”
I think I’ve heard a few of these songs live. So there was that part of me that was wondering if this was a collection of material. It must have been a demo when you performed it.
“The beauty of performing live when you have new songs is you can try them out live in front of people and feel their energy and know that this feels good, and you look out in the audience and see that they are feeling it too. This is something that we can put to recording because it feels good. Because we tried it out first. That’s what bands do.”
So I got the advance link to download it on that Haulix interface, and I popped it into iTunes, and the first thing that comes up is that you are an “unknown genre.” I was like, that’s accurate. That’s good.
“(laughs) Amazing. It went, ‘what the fuck is this?’”
I kind of think you own that. You are an unknown genre—you kind of throw everything in there.
“Yep. The roots of my music is blues. Blues has spawned a lot of babies. Blues has spawned punk, and rock, and R&B, and soul, and jazz. That’s the roots of my foundation. I mean, if they wanted to genrify me and say blues, I’ll take that, but I don’t know if the blues community will (laughs). They might say, ’she’s not quite blues.’ Whatever, fuck you.”
There’s blues; there’s some soul; there’s some gospel. There’s all kinds of stuff.
“There’s always going to be blues there. That is my foundation. And that’s rock n‘ roll.”
Pretty much. Up until 1980’s heavy metal, when bands weren’t using traditional blues structure, blues was rock n’ roll for sure.
“Blues was the first pop music of the world. It’s the mother of music.”
So why did you pull out that track “When I Let You Go” and keep it off of your album and release it as a single? What was your impetus for that?
“So ‘When I Let You Go’ is from the recording sessions of Red, Black, and Blue. It was never officially released; it was just to the pledgers when I was making the album. So a handful of people around the world have all of the songs that I have recorded on that project. I thought the song was timely, and it was a great bridge between the old (Red, Black, and Blue) and moving into The Fool.”
And how are we looking at marketing The Fool? Are you doing CDs? Are you doing Vinyl? Are you going digital-only?
“Oh well, there are CDs. I don’t know how many people have CD players and CD drives or CD players in their cars. Well, see, you are a rare person…”
This is the cloud (motions behind me to a wall of LPs, a record player, and a CD player) right here.
“Exactly. I would like to do vinyl, but I know that everyone is doing vinyl, so there’s a long list to wait to get the actual product.”
Just put it into production and wait until you get it.
“That’s the plan. But CDs are available. It definitely will be available digitally. I’m making tarot cards to go with the marketing of the album. So that’s a physical thing my you can’t put that physical thing into anything and play it.”
Now you said that you are making them. Are you drawing them? Is this your art that you are putting out there?
“It is my art. I am not drawing them. I’m doing digital collage. So the artwork for ‘Howler’ and ‘Nobody,’ those are two cards that I’ve done. ‘Howler’ is the Empress card, and ‘Nobody’ is the Strength card. Those will be two of the 22 cards that I will be putting out. Yeah, that’s my art. That’s my work. There’s that saying, ‘No mud, no lotus.’ Out of the dirt and muck, there’s these beautiful things that come out. I had three different artists that I was working with to do these tarot cards, and it just didn’t flow. It came to a point where I was like, ‘do I need to find a new artist?’ And my manager was like, ‘No! You’re going to figure out how to do it yourself and then do it yourself. You know what you want.’ But I don’t do Photoshop. I take paper and scissors and make things. He just said, ‘however you are going to do it, you do it. Or figure out how to do Photoshop.’ And all the insecurities, all the bullshit, all the mud came up. Everyone starts somewhere.
So I got in front of the computer and started to figure it out. I’ve just been practicing, and the beautiful thing about being stuck at home is there’s nowhere to go. There’s no shows. There’s no schedule, and there’s no need to rehearse or anything. So it was; computer, learning, Photoshop; and then I’d go out to my studio, and then I’d go to my home studio so I could record and send my vocals to my producer. So I was learning a lot through this pandemic time. It’s all the journey of The Fool. Throwing myself off the cliff and not knowing where the fuck I’m going to land. I don’t know if I’ll be safe. I just don’t know. And now, here I am.”
Can we talk a bit about self-promotion and how you promote yourself? I’m curious what your benchmark is as an artist. Through your mom, you would know what a traditional album deal was like back in the day. You were an artist, you’d get a record deal, and then you’d get a band and make a record, and it would just go through that old-school channel. But now, that doesn’t even exist anymore.
So how do you promote, and what are you looking at for benchmarks for yourself?
“It’s about communicating with my community, the people that are around me, giving them the information, sharing with them, riling them up, and getting them excited about it. It’s a lot on the artist and the artist’s team. If you don’t have a team or you are hiring out a team, it’s very different. I was going to say that I think back in the day, you had to do a little bit, but you really just had to show up back in the day. They would put up all the money, and you just had to show up. Now I feel like you have to do all of the things for THEM to show up. And by that time, it’s like, ‘what do I need you for?‘ I’ve done all of the work, you know?”
Distribution.
“Basically, yes. I do have a digital distributor, but it’s about hiring my team and making sure the people have what they need. I’ve worked with a few different video directors who I love, but I just met a director who I think we’re going to do a lot of work together. We see eye to eye. We just finished a short film, so that’s coming when the album comes out. So just sharing my vision would be self-promoting. That’s how I’ve got to tell the story. The benchmark? I don’t know what the benchmark is. I can’t compare me to anyone else. It’s just elevating beyond what I’ve already accomplished.
I kind of roll my eyes at this, but I’m in competition with myself. There’s nobody else that I can be in competition with or compare myself to—my benchmark. I don’t know the ins and outs of how someone else has gotten to where they get to. Some of the things that I get, they may not get. Some of the things I want to get, I’m the benchmark. From my last album, even today, I just saw an ad online for a Netflix stop-animation film called Wendell and Wild, Jordan Peele, he’s teamed up with the animators behind Coraline, and they’ve got a whole soundtrack, and I’m on the soundtrack with Bad Brains and Death and Big Joanie.”
That’s some good company.
“Yeah, That’s cool and all, but that’s my last album. So that’s still happening. That music is still out in the world doing things. My benchmark is just to keep on doing, and keep on adding more babies to the babies I have out there already.”
I want to finish up talking a little bit about comic books. Because the last time I spoke to you, we spoke comic books, but that was all after the interview. So let’s just chat a bit about your interest in that medium and the things that you like about comic books in general.
“Oddly enough, I knew that we were going to do this. (laughs) Because that was such a great conversation, I went back into my Martha Washington Saves The World comic, and it’s very timely. The fact that Frank Miller never wanted to do anything with that series. He thought it was too precious and didn’t want it touched. And now looking at it, and the subject matter? I started rereading it, and it’s pretty interesting. I think it goes to 2094 or something like that? I found another one called Bitch Planet.”
Yeah, I read that. I kind of liked that. It was sort of full of graffiti and stuff.
“Yeah, it was pretty raunchy.”
But the art was cool, and the colours were nice, and that’s kind of why I gravitated to it.
“I loved the ads that they put in there.”
Yeah. The fake ads? They were cool.
“Other than that, Bitch Planet is the last thing that I really picked up recently. I haven’t been collecting as much as I’d like to. Yeah. What’s good now? What will I be into? What are you collecting?”
I like this writer named Ed Brubaker. He wrote this Image series called Sleeper. And then he did Criminal. And lately, he’s been doing 144-page hardcover books called Reckless. There are three of them out right now, and they are awesome.
He’s not releasing classic comic books; he’s looking at the medium as more of; “let’s just put our stories out; let’s spend four or five months getting the stories done and getting the print done and then releasing it to market and selling it for about 20 bucks.” He’s doing well with them, and they are great. They are the best thing that I’m reading right now.
“Aside from comic books, which has been a little bit on the back burner, I’ve just immersed myself in astrology and tarot.”
Did you get to watch the HBO Watchmen series?
“I didn’t finish watching it. But yeah. That was pretty fucking cool.”
I expected it to really suck. Watchmen, for me, is just the best. You’re just not going to get a better comic book presentation than that, and I thought that the movie was just ok.
“Yeah, the movie was alright.”
And the HBO series was so good; Bam! Tulsa! And we are just going to do this thing with this character, a member of the original Minutemen team who wore a hood over his head because he was black. I thought that was brilliant. Just brilliant.
“Yeah. There’s a lot of great TV coming out. Perfect timing; we are all at home. It’s prime time to catch people. Yeah, I’ve got to finish that. Thank you for reminding me about it.”
I went into that one because Trent Reznor did the music, so I’m going to watch it because I really love what he does with his music. When the first episode ended, I thought it was the coolest thing I’d seen in a long time. I was hooked immediately.
“You know what, honestly, I think I only saw the first episode.”
You should, uh, finish that off.
“Yeah. And speaking of Trent Reznor, you know, there are just certain people in the world where you kind of get a whiff of their music and energy, but you don’t delve into it. I’m not always a follow-the-crowd kind of person. So when everyone was talking about Nine Inch Nails, I just kind of said, ‘Ok, cool.’ So I’ll take about ten, maybe 15 years before I actually get into Nine Inch Nails (laughs) and Trent Reznor. Oh my God, I fucking love him so much. That would be a dream mentor of mine. I would love to be mentored by him. Even just to sit in the room and learn and experience that whole process.”
Did you play that Halsey album that just came out?
“No, not yet.”
He’s all over it. He produced it and played on like 75 percent of it. It’s like a Nine Inch Nails album with Halsey singing on it. It’s wild. I wasn’t even going to touch it, and then I found out how much he did on it. I love it, so all of her fan base are going to hate it.
“(laughs) Right! But she apparently loves Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, so fuck ’em. I mean, not fuck the fans, but grow with her! I’ll definitely check that out.”
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