Kath Bloom

The daughter of world famous oboist Robert Bloom, Kath grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where she started playing guitar among the headstones of her local cemetery as a teenager. She met avant-garde guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors in 1976 and together they recorded six limited edition albums of fragile folk and blues melodies, ending with final album Moonlight in 1984. Chapter Music has re-released four of these albums - Sing The Children Over, Sand In My Shoe, Restless Faithful Desperate and Moonlight - on vinyl and CD.

Soon after her collaboration with Connors ended, Kath and husband Stan Bronski moved to Florida together to live amidst the orange groves, buying and rehabilitating old houses. After a period of child-rearing and family life, Kath began to return to the recording in the early 90s. Director Richard Linklater discovered Bloom's music around that time and featured her song Come Here in his 1995 film Before Sunrise. By then, Bloom had begun recording again in earnest, self-releasing a series of cassettes and CDRs starting with Love Explosion in 1993 and including Come Here: The Florida Years in 1999.  

The pick of these songs were compiled on the Chapter Music album Finally in 2005, revealing an songwriter now older and wiser, but as accomplished and affecting as Lucinda Williams or Gillian Welch. Kath’s gentle guitar picking, haunting vocals, and mournful harmonica illuminate material less fragile than the recordings of her youth, but perhaps even more emotionally direct and powerful. 

2008 saw tribute album Loving Takes This Course, with versions of Kath's songs by artists such as Bill Callahan, Devendra Banhart, Mark Kozelek and the Dodos. Kath has toured UK, Europe and Japan multiple times since then, and released solo albums Terror (2009) and Pass Through Here (2015) on Chapter, as well as records via other labels. 

"she can snap a heart like a twig" - Pitchfork