Bio
Katie is an award-winning musician and songwriter, who has performed live on PBS & NPR stations, and has toured from New York to Colorado, Texas to Tennessee.
She has shared bills with Tony Rice, Del McCoury Band, Yonder Mountain String Band, The Steel Wheels, The Black Lillies, Lake Street Dive, Langhorne Slim, The David Mayfield Parade, and many others.
Her singing and harmonies have been compared to Emmylou Harris (The Alternate Root Magazine), Gillian Welch (Isthmus, Madison, WI) Aiofe O’Donovan (Americana UK) and Gram Parsons (City Paper, Rochester, NY.)
She was also voted “Best Country/Bluegrass Performer” in her former home of Madison, Wisconsin, in the Madison Area Music Awards.
She recently released her sophomore album, Live by the Song, Die by the Song, (Red-Winged Blackbird Records) which is a stripped-down, intimate recording of acoustic Appalachian ballads Powderly wrote one summer while splashing in the Shenandoah River, falling in and out of “love.”
This folky, bluegrass-adjacent recording serves as a contrast to her first album, Slips of the Tongue, a fully-produced Americana album featuring a smoking-hot electrified and electrifying band including such luminaries as Josh Oliver (Watchhouse/Mandolin Orange), Bryn Davies (Tony Rice, Guy Clark, Jack White), Tom Pryor (The Black Lillies), and Jill Andrews (the everybodyfields) and was recorded by Mike Zirkel at Butch Vig's famed Smart Studios in Madison, WI, with significant help from Scott Minor (Sparklehorse.)
When Katie is not on the road sharing her solo musical experiences with audiences across the nation, she is performing with her electric Americana band, The Unconditional Lovers, whose first album will be released this year (2024).
She recently stepped away from her position on the bluegrass bass, playing and singing in hard-driving PA bluegrass band, Dead Horse Revival, which features former members of Mountain Ride.
During Katie’s tenure in the band, Dead Horse Revival recorded and released a 7-track EP of original songs entitled All Hat No Saddle available on streaming platforms everywhere, and won “Best Bluegrass Band” in the Central Pennsylvania Music Hall of Fame Awards.
In the past Katie has acted as bluegrass bass sideman for such acts as The David Mayfield Parade and Woody Pines.
Katie on Instagram
