Kate Schutt plays the operator on The Telephone Game

By Jonathan Shipley
Published: July 28th, 2009 | 7:00am

"It is a secret process," affirms Kate Schutt (pronounced "Shut") about the way she goes about writing one of her jazzy and penetrating songs. "I am not the kind of artist that sits around waiting for a reception. I am making and playing new music everyday — that's the ride." The ride has taken the former hockey star from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (where she grew up near Andrew Wyeth) to a degree in English from Harvard to playing guitar at Berklee School Of Music. Then all the way to Canada, palling around with musicians from Newfoundland, to creating her new album, The Telephone Game, released this month by ArtistShare.

The Telephone Game, — where Schutt brings forth three of her passions: guitar, singing, and songwriting — is a dream band of sorts in jazz circles. Playing alongside Schutt is Terri Lyne Carrington (Herbie Hancock) on drums and Orrin Evans (Mingus Big Band) on piano, with standout performances by saxophonists, horns, and even a gospel choir.

"My very first guitar teacher was a jazzer. The first songs I learned to play on the guitar were standard Wes Montgomery and Horace Silver tunes," says Schutt. "At 11, I picked up the guitar, and we studied the music of Miles Davis and other great jazz artists.” Her personal jazz influences include such luminaries as Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, and Joe DeFrancesco.

It wasn't in her line of sight, however, to actually play guitar, sing songs, or write for a living. With a love of Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Keats, she instead majored in English Literature at Harvard. "I dare you to go into any English department and ask the students what they plan on doing with their degrees,” she challenges. “You'll get 100 different answers. I might have been a teacher, a professor, administrator, politician, postal worker, or fisherman. I'm serious. I do love fishing."

Perhaps it's best for music fans that Schutt isn't trolling the bays looking for salmon, but instead traveling the nation touring and sitting in studios recording albums. Her first release, No Love Lost (ArtistShare), was released in 2007. "I had a small handful of songs written and an idea in my head for how they should sound," she says. No Love Lost’s song, “How Much Is Love,” won Schutt a John Lennon Songwriting Award.

With The Telephone Game, Schutt’s writing process was a bit new-fangled. She crafted the album using stories above love submitted by fans as inspiration. “I wanted to write new jazz standards. Along the way, I happened to write some rockers, too.” The new album is, as Schutt says, “more blown-out and full production. I upped my arrangement game.”

“It’s natural to lose and to not always understand everything about the people you love,” Schutt notes. So naturally, The Telephone Game reflects varying perspectives. “You’re a book I’m reading / Pages falling out,” she begins on the track, “You Can Have the Sky.” With “If Spring Comes Now,” Schutt’s jazzy melancholia filters through the tune. “I wrote it because everyday people celebrate spring, but it is also an overwhelming season, and can sometimes seem like too much to take in all at once.”

Listeners, however, can take the album in all at once, and want to play it again, at once. The tunes are varied, the words are thoughtful, the musicianship top-notch. As for Schutt, she puts her own simplistic goal forward, “I hope people can relate my lyrics to their own lives — real and imagined.”

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