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Katie Scullin Brings Pop-Blues-Rock to Door County

The crystal clear, edgy voice of Madison singer-songwriter Katie Scullin is one that has drawn comparisons to some of the greatest female singers of recent decades: Heart’s hard rocker Ann Wilson, pop-indie rocker Kimbra, and the late soul singer Amy Winehouse.

Those are fitting comparisons for a young woman whose dad was a huge fan of female singers: Sophie B. Hawkins, Joan Osborne, Carly Simon and Tori Amos were regulars on the household music player. But as Scullin got older, she expanded her musical tastes to encompass the tunes one would expect a dad to be listening to: hard rock, heavy metal, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, with a dash of “cookie cutter pop.”

While Scullin navigated the path of her childhood and teen years, music was always part of it. By the time she reached her late teens and early 20s, she was set on pursuing a life in music and with her brother, DJ, put together her first band, Sibling Rivalry.

After playing some bar gigs, they met up with two seasoned musicians who brought them into the professional aspect of playing music, broadening their audiences with festival gigs and recording an album. They dropped the “Sibling,” and Rivalry, a band playing covers and originals, moved forward.

“The players that we had met were very much into Heart, Joan Jett so I started to take on those inspirations, like Melissa Etheridge, like the rocker chick so a lot of my old school, soft, loving influences turned into the angry rock chick,” Scullin laughed.

In 2009, she led Rivalry in Summerfest’s Emerging Artists Series competition, taking home the gold and the swag that came with it. But as much fun as she was having with the band, Scullin knew she couldn’t rest on her laurels.

She quickly became the frontwoman for another Madison band, Star Persons, a colorful electro-rap-pop group comprised of Scullin, two rappers and a backing band. The band won back-to-back Madison Area Music Awards for Hip-Hop Album of the Year, Hip-Hop Performer of the Year and Hip-Hop Song of the Year in 2011 and 2012, and New Artist of the Year in 2011.

That band, too, fizzled out after a brief time, leaving Scullin discouraged but determined to continue as a solo artist.

“I wasn’t going to break up with myself and I would build the band around what I needed,” she said of the decision to go solo. “I figured out a way to maintain and it’s been going pretty good.”

“Pretty good” is a pretty accurate descriptor for someone who took the top honor (plus a $1,000 cash prize and a Summerfest gig) as Best Singer/Songwriter in 2014 as part of 105.5 Triple M Radio’s Project M competition. The competition challenged eight musicians to create original songs over a five-week period. Contestants were challenged to write one song per week based on a random subject and perform it for a live audience (the performances were also live streamed and voted on).

Scullin recalled the random subjects of the competition – writing a tune based on an ad for a local eyewear company, pulling a song title out of a hat, composing a tune that one might hear when on hold ordering a pizza – and how taking part has influenced her view on a career in music.

“It taught me to not overthink my lyrics so much and it brought me back into things that I could fall back on – if I were to write little jingles for commercials in the future as a side job,” she said. “Also if in the future I were to be with a record label and they wanted a certain specific song that I would be able to do that because I had the practice. When I wrote ‘Pretty Lady,’ it brought out the pop and the rock in me which were the influences I had from the first two bands I was in.”

Today Scullin infuses all of her performances, be they at festivals, bars or martini lounges, with the eclectic sounds that have influenced her nearly decade-long journey in professional music. She has done the same with her forthcoming album, Pieces.

“It’s taken me almost two years to complete it but it’s in the final stages right now which is pretty exciting,” she said. “Every song is a little bit different. There’s rock, the edgy rock ‘n roll Joan Jett meets Melissa Etheridge rock songs and then the pop, and then there’s heartfelt ballads on there. ‘You and I’ has a hard rock, almost a little metal. Hard rock pop. Then there’s a song on there that’s very folk so it’s going to be quite eclectic.”

Scullin plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund the completion of the album and a music video. In the meantime, catch her heartfelt, indie-pop tunes live in Sturgeon Bay and Ephraim in the days to come.

Katie Scullin performs at 7pm on Saturday, Aug. 20 at Kitty O’Reilly’s Irish Pub, 59 E. Oak St. in Sturgeon Bay and at 6pm on Monday, Aug. 22 at Harborside Park on Highway 42 in Ephraim. For more on her music, visit KatieScullin.com.

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