Q&A: Black Belt Eagle Scout Speaks of Identity and Gratitude Through Third Album ‘The Land, The Water, The Sky’
KATHERINE “KP” PAUL IS CAREFUL WITH WORDS — During my Zoom call with the musician behind Black Belt Eagle Scout, we laughed about finding synonyms for the word “ancestors” (“I feel like it gets really redundant,” she says). In between questions, KP clarified and paused, choosing her words thoughtfully. KP is a person who says what she means and means what she says, leaving no room for misunderstanding.
This trait is vital in communicating such intimate thoughts on her latest record, The Land, The Water, The Sky, released via Saddle Creek Records. As the album title suggests, the record is inspired by and grounded in the singer’s natural surroundings. In 2020, KP decided to move from her then-residence of Portland, Oregon to her home in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in La Conner, Washington. The nature of her ancestral homelands — towering cedar trees, the flowing water of the Skagit River — and her time spent within them was a catalyst for this record. Not only has KP’s connection with the land — and thus, her past generations of family — allowed her to explore her identity, but the album serves as a profession of gratitude to the land, the water, and the sky for holding her through it all.
Throughout The Land, The Water, The Sky, KP’s breathy and lush vocals accompany the grunge flares, creating a new breed of alt-rock that bleeds with love. The most intimate moments are the album’s best. On “Understanding,” a song in which KP herself plays every instrument, she sings, “Sometimes I can't even hold me / Sometimes I can't even find time for myself yet / Here I am understanding,” before the soft strums break into an electrifying solo. On the album closer, she belts, “I don’t give up,” as her voice reverberates into itself, as if she shouts this mantra out into the world and the world shouts back.
Upon the first chord of the album opener, “My Blood Runs Through This Land,” there is already a major sonic shift from the other two Black Belt Eagle Scout records, At the Party With My Brown Friends (2019) and Mother of My Children (2018). The Land, The Water, The Sky is fully cinematic. A string trio deepens the beauty of “Salmon Stinta”; the billowing voices of KP’s parents sing atop “Spaces.” The amount of collaboration is the most distinct revelation to the sound of the album. (There are 10 collaborators total, including KP — she affectionately lists each one to me during our interview, following each one with praise.)
Each song on KP’s third album is so intensely crafted that any one could be released as a single and have its own moment. The singer-songwriter is a storytelling mastercraft. Put all of these songs on a record and you get a through line tale of one’s journey within themselves. Read our interview with KP as they share the stories that made The Land, The Water, The Sky below.
Photo by Nate Lemuel
LUNA: How do you feel now that your new album is out in the world?
KP: I feel great. The record was done a year ago. I’ve just been sort of sitting, waiting for it to come out, working with the timeline. When the pandemic happened, everyone started writing music and there was a huge delay in getting vinyl created so I had to shift the timeline back. I’ve been ready for this to come out and just have been sitting with it. It’s been nice to have more time to reflect on the work… It's been nice to just sit with it and to revisit and to relearn. Also to realize what the songs are live and have them take a little bit of a different form but then also stay true to what the record sounds like.
LUNA: There’s this idea with a lot of musicians that whenever they release a piece of work, they say it belongs to the listener now. What’s it like putting out records that are so personal and sharing that with the listener?
KP: I hope the listener would understand that the record and what I write… I write a lot about myself. I write a lot about what I think, … my thoughts. I feel like I’m still learning how to respond to that sort of stuff. I feel like I’ll probably always be learning. I remember having a conversation with somebody who’s really close with me. She was talking about “My Blood Runs Through This Land” and gave me her interpretation of the song. And I was like, that’s not what it’s about at all (laughs). It’s interesting trying to navigate all of that. Songs can become personal to people. I definitely have songs that I’m like, “That song is my song.” I listened to a lot of Cat Power when I was in my early twenties and was going to college and I was like, “This is how I feel — this speaks to me.” I understand that people will respond to the music and I just sort of have to keep understanding and keep trying to figure out what that means.
LUNA: It's interesting to see the difference — some artists will have, for example, lyrics that are super vague, and they're like, “I don't want to say what it's about because I want other people to have that freedom to give it its own meaning.” Other artists are kind of like, “This is exactly what it's about and I need people to know that this is my intention with the music.” So it's interesting to see perspectives on that.
KP: I feel like, [with] this album, I’m not really trying to be vague. I feel like I’m really trying to be intentional and explain what it’s about. It’s like a documentary of what I have thought and gone through in the past two years. It’s very autobiographical. Sometimes I feel odd when people are like, “Oh, it means this.” I’m like, no, it’s about something I wrote about me.
LUNA: So you moved back home from Portland in 2020 and you didn’t really move with an intention to start a third album. Can you tell me how the process for your third album started for you?
KP: I was, like a lot of people, trying to survive. I was like, “What do I do? How can I survive? I can’t do music anymore, I don’t have enough money to just sit in my home and whatnot…” My parents were having a hard time health-wise and I was like, “Okay, I have to move home; I have to go back home. This is the place where I know I need to be.” So I moved home and was trying to just be and have a life and connect with my parents, connect with some family. I would play guitar here and there and I had some things but it was more so I played guitar because I felt moved to play guitar. I had a couple songs and I was thinking about doing an EP. I was thinking about doing an EP before the pandemic happened, like, “Maybe I’ll do an EP before my next full-length record.” So I had that in mind and had done an online Zoom speaking event with my friend Takiaya [Reed, of Divide and Dissolve]. We had a lot in common with how we think about gear and how we think about sounds, and we really clicked. I was like, “Taikaiya, we should collaborate — let’s make this EP.”
I think it was because we were just getting so excited about working together, going to the studio and talking about it — it was just in our heads, like, “We can’t just do an EP… If we’re going to work together, we have to do something bigger.” We had to shift gears, and it took a lot longer. I actually really liked that it took a lot longer because I feel like [we were] able to give more attention to each song and have some time to put more energy into how we wanted the song to present itself to the world.
LUNA: When you first moved back home, what were some of the things that you were feeling that were inspiring these new batch of songs?
KP: It was a time where you couldn’t really connect in person with a lot of people. My tribe was being very safe and cautious about COVID. We weren’t having our gatherings, we weren’t coming together as a community really at all. My tribe, we are a very community-oriented people. We get together a lot. There’s so many events each week. I feel like when I moved back home, I had to go back to the natural world and try and strengthen relationships that I had with the land… That was a really big part of moving back home. Maybe if I had moved back home and it wasn’t a pandemic, maybe this album wouldn’t have had much space to go back to what is the natural world. Maybe there could’ve been a couple things, but I feel like there was a lot of space and a lot of room for me to be able to explore and find out what those sorts of connections mean to me.
Photo by Morningstar Angeline
LUNA: When you had initially moved to Portland, before you moved back home, did you visit Washington often?
KP: I visit a lot. I feel like I still have been a part of this community. And here, it’s not like I forgot about people. It’s interesting… I’ve read some things where people are like, “She moved away and then she moved back home,” and it’s not really like that. I can never really forget about my community. I was born and raised here. This is where I’m from, this is where my people are from. My people have always been here, will always be here. It’s not like I just moved away and came back. I’ve been connected to the community and visiting and trying to learn more about my family ever since. It was more so that I just wasn’t a resident and that I didn’t live full-time here as an adult.
LUNA: I've read in some articles how connected your identity is to nature. Do you mind describing that relationship?
KP: Well, I’m going to preface it… I feel like it’s still something I’m trying to figure out. There’s certain places that I go on my reservation and within my homelands that is in nature. I walk into a specific family of cedar trees or I’m along a coastline and I just get this really nice grounding feeling. It’s this feeling where I think about it in perspective of who I am in my own life, how I identify, where I am presently. And I just feel like myself. I feel like this is okay to be in the world… This is where I’m supposed to be and this is who I’m meant to be. I don’t know if it’s the trees that are telling it to me or if it’s the fact that, where I live, my grandparents, my great-grandparents going way back, they walked on those same places. All of my relations have been in the same places. It’s just… so supportive of who I am in that moment, I guess. I’m still trying to figure it out because I’m young. I think about, what will I think when I’m an elder? What will that mean to me when I’m an elder? Will it be the same thing, or is it just this moment here for me so that I can try and figure out something for the future? But within my identity, it feels very loving, being able to walk on my homelands.
LUNA: Moving onto the tracklist, I’ll start with “My Blood Runs Through This Land” because it’s a hell of an opener. Do you want to tell me a little bit about that track?
KP: Those chords that are running throughout the entire song, I had been toying with those for the past five or so years. I was like, I like these chords, but they never really came into something. Then I actually did the song for a fundraiser. A B-side version of it was on this downloadable thing — [they were] raising money for down by the border in Texas, I think. So I had something that is maybe what I want it to be. I think this song kept taking different forms. It kept showing itself in a way where it’s like, I’m this way now but in a couple weeks I’ll be something else. I’m really happy with how it turned out in the recording and how it finally came to show itself because it’s something that I’ve been working on for a really long time.
I try and connect sound to what the essence of a song is. With “My Blood Runs Through This Land,” I’m really trying to show through sound and through guitar lines that my ancestors run very powerfully through our lands. That image of them in my brain, of them running so powerfully, I see that and I hear those guitar lines coming through in the song. I tried to create those guitar lines to be very powerful and also kind of hectic-sounding.
LUNA: Is it ever difficult for you to find a certain progression or line that matches what you’re thinking of?
KP: Usually if something is difficult, I try not to do it. I get that teaching from my parents and some community members. They say you have to have a good mind when you’re creating things or doing something. Like cooking, for example. If you’re cooking something for somebody, it’s gonna taste good if you have a really good mind. It’s gonna taste bad if you’re thinking negatively about stuff. I’ve definitely had times when it’s been hard and I just stopped. I was like, it’s not meant to be. I almost had to stop on one part but I just tried to push through it with the guitar lines in “Fancy Dance.” I knew what it was going to be, but it was really hard for me to do all the guitar work. I had to do, like, 30 takes to try and get it.
Photo by Nate Lemuel
LUNA: Is it hard to decide when to stop and when to keep going? Or do you just kind of go with your gut?
KP: I just kind of go with my gut. I feel like I am pretty good at knowing when something doesn't feel right, and then I don't want to do it and then I just stop.
LUNA: Another standout track for me is “Treeline.” That song is really beautiful, and I think it’s a lot different than the other tracks on the album. Could you share a bit about that song?
KP: I love “Treeline.” I think it's probably the most dark and artistic song on the album. I wrote it about depression, how depression affects me. I was sort of on the fence about explaining more about it because I feel like sometimes when you talk about sad things that ends up being the focal point of stuff, and I try not to have tragic-sounding things be the focal point. It's not necessarily what I want the record to be about because the record is very hopeful and there's a lot of really beautiful things.
I can't remember if I was talking to a therapist or if I was listening to a podcast by a therapist, but they’re talking about anxiety and depression and how a way to get through it is that, if you think about it as like an “other,” if you “other” it from yourself and think about it as something else, then if it's away from you, you can find a clear path to heal. I was thinking about that a lot with the song and how sometimes when I think of depression and particularly things that I go through with depression and anxiety, if I'm able to like other it, it can move into this human space. I othered it in the song, and it's very dark. I othered it in this demonic way, like it's a demon; it's like looking inside of me — I have to look another way.
LUNA: On “Spaces,” your parents sing vocals. What was it like having your parents come in on that song specifically?
KP: It was really fun. I knew that I wanted them to be a part of the record and to sing on it somehow. I didn’t know what it was going to be until we were well into recording. I was realizing “Spaces” has space for a chorus. They couldn’t do it to a click track… so I was there with them. I was like, okay, here are the notes (sings) and I was going like this with my hand for the time, and they just did it how they thought they would do it naturally.
My dad, he has this really powerful voice because he’s a powwow singer and a Coast Salish singer. He does prayer songs and healing songs specific to ceremony. My mom, she has this really beautiful round voice that maybe you can’t hear on the recording because it blends in really well with my voice. My dad’s voice stands out the most, I think. I tend to tear up when I hear him sing that part because it means so much that they are on it. The song specific[ally] is about healing, and it’s supposed to be this kind of gratitude and thank you for being there for me with music, [also to] the people that come to the shows, the people that interview me, the people that are here to help and be a part of what I’m doing with my art and my music. I just feel really thankful that this is my life.
LUNA: Want to tell me about the other collaborative efforts on the album?
KP: Honestly, it’s been a pretty good experience. I probably will be open and work with other people in the future. I think I had sort of been scared to work with other people. The last two records, I just did everything myself. I feel like maybe that even held me back a little bit. I know it held me back a bit. Probably there would have been awesome collaborations on them. But I [had] this mentality — with the first record — of wanting to do it myself, of wanting to prove to myself that I could do it. And also weirdly wanting to prove to other people that this Native American queer woman can record all the stuff on her record. I was like “Well, you know what, I don’t really need to prove that to anybody.” I’m just me. What I want to prove to myself is I can feel vulnerable in my collaborations and move into that new space of being able to grow as a musician.
LUNA: Finally, what’s something new you’ve learned about yourself after finishing the album?
KP: I found that there are different depths of vulnerability that I can go into within myself and be okay in them. I had to be vulnerable in so many different ways that I hadn't really ever been used to. I think that learning how far into that vulnerability that I can go that I’m actually okay with, I feel like it's made me a little bit stronger in being able to handle different things in life.
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