A year in the life of a Cork musician...

HAVING always struggled to write songs, Cork musician Katie Archer says a visit to Cape Town in December, 2022, sparked something in her.

While staying with her brother and his wife in the South African capital, she was inspired by the landscape, the people and the music. When she returned to Ireland, “it was like a floodgate - I picked up my guitar and suddenly I was writing songs,” she said.

The result is a music video series entitled Songs Where They Belong // Cork, which is being released on YouTube.

Katie, 26, who was born in Kinsale, moved to Kenya with her family when she was three and lived there for the next nine years.

On return to Ireland at the age of 12, Katie and her family relocated to Midleton where she attended Midleton College. She went on to study music and human development at DCU (Dublin City University).

While at secondary school, Katie became friends with Polish film-maker, Matylda Jablonka. Bonding over their shared love of music, film and distant lands, Matylda became Katie’s creative collaborator. (Matylda studied film at Oxford Brookes University and in Poland.)

Last year, Katie worked on her composition skills and wrote a lot of songs. She realised how much places around Cork meant to her and impacted her creativity. She decided to capture recordings of the songs in the places around Cork that inspired her and enlisted Matylda to film her.

Katie’s audio-visual journey through Cork is a live-take video EP that offers an insight into her world.

Katie writes on themes of youth, growth and intuition. The songs she is releasing chronicle a year in her life, a year that saw her move out of home, establish a base for herself in Cork city, navigate new relationships, “and dive head first into the scary and beautiful world of musicianship.”

She writes “to process, to understand, to empathise and to let go”.

The songs she recorded and the locations that Matylda filmed include Morning Light, filmed in Katie’s home near The Lough; Frame, filmed in St Lukes; Oh, the Night, filmed in Bells Field, and Someday Soon filmed in Robert’s Cove.

From a musical family, singing became a big passion for Katie when she was a teenager. She played guitar for a few years in Kenya. On moving back to Ireland, Katie immersed herself in music. She and her twin sister Bryony used to busk on Oliver Plunkett Street in their late teens.

The move abroad was originally intended by Katie’s parents to be just a road trip from South Africa to Kenya. The family of five children thought they’d be gone for six months. It turned into nine years. Katie’s father had been an estate agent in Kinsale. In Kenya, he had various jobs including farming, running a camp site and teaching. Katie’s mother continued her career as a ballet teacher.

I had an amazing childhood in Kenya. It definitely wasn’t always easy; it can be a dangerous place. We witnessed some difficult things.

“I started boarding school at the very young age of six because we lived so remotely. But what stuck with me were the expanse of the place, the freedom that I had and the beautiful diversity of people and nature. I’m really grateful to have grown up there.”

While Katie didn’t go to singing classes in Kenya, she took part in group singing at school. Her school, which is for both primary and secondary level pupils, “had a brilliant music department that put on great plays, concerts and talent shows. I was lucky to get to perform with much older kids who were really brilliant singers.”

Relocating to Midleton on the cusp of adolescence was a little unsettling.

“But I was lucky to have my twin sister and going through it together made it easier. I think I was ready to come back and reconnect with my Irishness. I’m really glad I did. We met lovely friends in Midleton and I really enjoyed secondary school.”

One of Katie’s older sisters bought her a guitar when the family moved back to County Cork.

“I definitely used playing and singing as a kind of retreat from the world, a chance to spend time with myself and recharge, without really knowing that was what I was doing at the time. It’s still all about that for me.

I think that music as a whole was a real solace and listening to music became really important at that time. I started discovering cool artists and would be fascinated by their lyrics and how they put a song together.

As teenagers, Katie and Matylda liked alt-rock and indie-folk.

“Alt J were big for us and Saint Motel, Jinja Safari, and we really loved The Staves. I think we were both quite philosophical teenagers and we liked emotive music that was layered and meaningful and musically complex – maybe in a bit of a teen emo way.”

Katie knew she and Matylda would make a good team.

“I had seen the films that Matylda had made for university and I loved her very gentle feminine style.”

Originally, Katie only planned to make one video but with songs flowing from her, it became clear she was going to make a series. Two of the songs and videos were released in January, with four being released through February and the final one on March 1.

Currently in Cape Town, Katie is taking a break from “my very busy life in Cork. Between working nearly full time as a substitute teacher, running gigs with Brouhaha (her events company) and working on the series, I was pretty exhausted by the end of 2023. I’m using this time away to recharge and write and hopefully do some gigging and recording too.

“I played at a festival here over the New Year and met some lovely musicians who offered to help me record.”