At heart, Kait Dunton is a trio pianist — a rather good trio pianist — but that’s never stopped her from expanding into new areas. She explored extended form compositions with Mountain Suite, went ‘electric’ starting with trioKAIT 2 and expanded band formats with sophisticated arrangements for Planet D’earth.
Now you can add “singer-songwriter” to Dunton’s expanding list of musical accomplishments.
Dunton used the pandemic downtime to work on tunes with lyrics and to bring out her inner Carole King. She even took it to the point of recording her output. For “You Gotta Know” (video above), she put together a quartet with Jake Reed on drums, Andrew Synowiec on guitar and Sean Hurley on bass guitar while Dunton handled keys and sang, including the harmonies.
Hearing her voice for the first time makes one wonder why she held back for so long. It’s got some real soul and smoothness. The soul-jazz feel of the tune places it smack dab into Lindsey Webster territory, and the melody is undeniably catchy with a thoughtful bridge.
Each time Kait Dunton has revealed another musical side of her, she comes out with that new approach already mastered and this time is no exception. She’s indicated that there’s more of the vocal stuff where this came from, so stay tuned.
“You Gotta Know” is available for streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.
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