Katie Boeck of 'Spring Awakening' Sings Joni Mitchell's 'Blue'

Katie Boeck’s career has been wildly varied. After graduating UCLA’s Ray Bolger Musical Theater program, she spent her early twenties playing every Westside LA dive bar and coffeehouse, living on Lookout Mountain Drive and soaking in that Laurel Canyon sound. After performing at an open mic night, she landed a peculiar spot in an all-women Bollywood band that took her on a surreal six-month “Eat, Pray, Love-esque” tour of India, playing everything from farm weddings in Punjab to the Indian Navy’s annual gala. Afterwards, Boeck found herself back in LA with reverse culture shock, her old Chevy Caprice Classic and a heartbreak from a recent expatriate romance. She wove these experiences into the songs that appeared on her first EP, Speaking of You. Soon after, Boeck was featured on HBO’s critically-acclaimed television series “The Newsroom” performing her acoustic rendition of "Ave Maria". In the fall of 2015, Boeck then moved to New York to star in the Broadway revival of Duncan Sheik’s musical, Spring Awakening, where she shared the lead role of Wendla with deaf actress Sandra Mae Frank. The play’s success occasioned appearances on Late Night with Seth Meyers, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and a 2016 Tony nomination for Best Revival of a Musical. It was during her time on Broadway, that Boeck's father and one of her formative musical influences, passed away suddenly. Boeck took some time to heal, moving to Nashville and giving birth to a son. 

 

 

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, newly single-parenting, Boeck found herself struggling to find her voice. So she looked to one of her musical heroes, Joni Mitchell's oracular songs to help renew her own creative spark. She learned Joni’s watershed record Bluein its entirety and toured the show for a year. Living inside Joni’s cadences and signature melismas led Boeck back to her own sonic soil. She used songwriting’s ancient alchemy to find wisdom in her heartache and spiritual injuries, resulting in her latest original work, a full length album, entitled Calico. Musing over the dawn and dusks of relationships, love, and the metaphysical journey of self-actualization, Boeck channels an acoustic solar soundscape while owning the course of her own history.These are songs about life taking unexpected courses and stories of love just out- of-reach. Her cover of The Sign by Ace of Base was featured on the reality show Love Island USA. She has played Electric Forest Festival, Mile of Music, the Cutting Room, Hotel Cafe, City Winery and Carnegie Hall.