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Katie Todd

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Hometown	Chicago, IL
Genres
Band Members	Katie Todd, Stephen Wright, Ted Kezios, Benny Harnish, ... » more
Achievements	» more
Upcoming Shows	None

Contact Information:	Manager Stephen Wright steve@wrightmusic.com 847-445-7479
# Years Experience Performing Live:	8
# Live Perfomances Past Six-months:	30
Market Draw:	Home Market: 151-200
Venue History:	House of Blues - Chicago, IL Lilith Fair Tour - Chicago, IL The Joynt in Chicago - Chicago, IL Summerfest - Milwaukee, WI Orlando Pride - Orlando, FL Taste of Chicago - Chicago, IL Taste of Cincinnati - Cincinnati, OH THE VIPER ROOM - HOLLYWOOD, CA Arlenes Grocery NYC - New York, NY
Opener Experience:	Julianna Hatfield; Patti LaBelle; 10,000 Maniacs; Steve Winwood; OAR; Train; Huey Lewis and the News; Margot & The Nuclear So & Soas; Kenny Loggins ; The Wallflowers; Jewel; Green River Ordinance; Sarah McLachlan; Heart; Mary J Blige; Courtyard Hounds
Performing Rights Society:	BMI
Discography:	Mumbled Speech LP—2009; Make Some Time For Wasting LP—2005; Changing Faces LP—2003

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About the Artist

Having shared the stage with such music scene luminaries as Juliana Hatfield, Patti Labelle, 10,000 Maniacs, Steve Winwood, Margot & The Nuclear So & So’s, Kenny Loggins and The Wallflowers, the Chicago Arts and Entertainment Magazine has...

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Music

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Achievements

Video Finals Grand Prize Winner June 2011

Music Grand Prize Winner August 2010

Reached 1st in Best of Pop chart in 2011. 1st for 4 weeks.

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Press Coverage

Katie Todd and Shelley Miller by Gregg Shapiro
The busy queer music scene in Chicago is exemplified by Katie Todd and Shelley Miller. Both women can regularly be found performing live throughout the city. The gorgeous title track on “Mumbled Speech” (Level It), the latest disc by Katie Todd, is a perfect example of her near flawless pop ballad songwriting skills. She also shows admirable taste in cover material with her rendition of Leonard Cohen’s oft-recorded “Hallelujah.” Shelley Miller, sounding like Chicago’s answer to Chris Pureka and Mary Gauthier, returns with her solid and strong “When It’s All Gone, You Come Back,” on which she strikes the right balance between torch and twang.

Katie Todd ’00 Named One of "Best Unsigned Artists" of 2002 by Lafayette University
EASTON, Pa.(www.lafayette.edu), January 2, 2003 — Illinois Entertainer has selected Katie Todd Band, led by Katie Todd ’00, as one of its handful of “Best Unsigned Artists” of 2002. The singer-songwriter circle in Chicago is already cluttered with more artists than necessary, making it even harder to decipher one from another," it notes. "The budding Katie Todd may just be learning the ropes of the music industry, but her surprisingly mature songwriting sensibilities, alternative-folk flavored vocals, and stellar keyboard playing have only furthered her desire to stand out. Todd's Changing Faces provided a primary introduction to her promise, but seeing her in concert backed by a multi-talented three-piece band is what has generated the most buzz, amassing a substantial grassroots fan base in the process." Todd also was featured in a Singer Magazine article, which stated, “Her unique voice is enchanting and her musical style is captivating. There's a welcome depth to the songs, and a heartfelt message intertwined with her talented handling of the piano.” Highlights of 2002 for Todd included prevailing over thousands of contestants to win the Big Break Competition, performing at Summerfest, a large music festival in Milwaukee, appearances on national TV and radio, and releasing a CD.

10 Summer Must-dos by Metromix Chicago
Every summer you vow to attend more festivals, spend more time outdoors and generally make up for all of those hours lost to cold, dark winter months. But with so much to do, you always seem to overlook a few essentials. This year, use our bucket list as your guide to make sure you won’t have any regrets come fall. ... 7. Support a local artist at a big-time music fest. Arrive early at Lilith Fair July 17 to see Chicago singer Katie Todd (pictured) get a chance at stardom, thanks to her victory in a local talent search

Katie Todd releases "Changing Faces" by Darryl Cater
Katie Todd, a plucky new immigrant to Chicago from Pennsylvania with a knack for penning distinctively memorable piano-based pop tunes, has wasted no time winning attention in the crowded local scene. Her band celebrated its first anniversary only a few weeks ago, and already they have has won national opening gigs with Jewel and Steve Windwood. The richly talented Todd undoubtedly owes much of her nascent success to the impressive backing Katie Todd Band, which on this self-released CD debut has turned her consistently catchy but simple songs into a full set of strikingly original three dimensional three- and four-minute dramas. Anchored by her gutsy, distinctively raspy, idiosynratic vocals, hopped up on brass backing, underscored by rich and surprising violin, driven by rhythmic beds of bright mandolin or drum solos, surrounded by resounding Edge-style echo guitar, her songs shimmer and satisfy with a level of polish and promise their promising young author has only begun to deserve. There isn't a boring song on the album. Todd, who won the opening gig with Jewel by beating Chicagoan roots-rocker Zach Duenow in an online battle this Spring for websurfer votes, has been compared more than once to Natalie Merchant, but a closer comparison might be British pop diva Sheila Nicholls, a similarly plucky performer whose fairly basic piano playing is given an expansive polychromatic palette on CD. The production on Todd's Changing Faces CD by engineer Blaise Barton, drummer Mark Cameron and Todd, naturally, lacks the budget and breadth of Nicholl's super producer, Glenn Ballard. But Barton and company have fleshed out the blueprints of a similarly big, bright sound with much less. Melodically, Todd has spun out 12 solid specimens of good hard ear candy. Lyrically, she's a bit short of the songwriting chops of Nicholls and most of the popular modern pop songstresses her stuff calls to mind. Her words show the beginnings of a promisingly unusual songwriting voice, but her bare-bones, esoteric poems are usually a few stanzas short of a story, and it's often difficult to know what she's writing about. She avoids cliches and rarely distracts from the solid fun of the arrangements, but her words seem to be driven more by the powerfully catchy melodies than by any genuine desire to communicate verbally. The pickin's range from the the emptily rosy tunefulness of a chorus like "Recognize then find the time to la dee da, la dee da" ("Get Up") to the genuinely moving if skeletal psychological portrait "Afraid of Love." Todd's writing lacks the purpose of a Nicholls or DiFranco, the clever bite of a Fiona Apple, the sentimental emotiveness of Jewel, the thematic richness of the similarity stark and esoteric Sam Phillips, or the novel word choice and confessional openness of Tori Amos. But then she's well under 25 and already talented enough to warrant comparison to the above roster of killer feminine songwriters. Todd's piano playing matches the staccato simplicity of her stanzas. Classically trained at Lafayette University in Pennsylvania, she'd been composing instrumentals for years before a local band drafted the young college student and finally inspired her to begin experimenting with pop song writing. Just a few dozen months later her growth curve is a mite astonishing. Her playing, while less dazzlingly florid than Amos and less muscularly funky than Apple, provides the requisite punch to get the job done. Todd has been known to step apart from her band mates and play occasional solo shows at Uncommon Ground. Despite the limitations of her youth and their relative inexperience, the Katie Todd Band have managed to create a nearly perfect little indie pop album. And they've only been together for 13 months. It's hard to imagine Todd's career on anything other than an up ramp.

Chicago singer Katie Todd wins her way onto the local Lilith Fair lineup by Matt Pais
Thanks to her original song "Leave," Chicago singer-songwriter Katie Todd has won a local talent search to perform July 17 at First Midwest Bank Amphitheater as part of Lilith Fair. She'll get the day going on the Village stage, meaning she doesn't exactly get to play the big venue, but considering how bad the sound is down there, she shouldn't sweat it. If you're busy with Pitchfork that weekend, you can see Katie Todd July 2 at Schubas.

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Katie Todd

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