Biography
Singer/songwriter Karen Pernick has earned descriptions of her understated approach as haunted, melancholic, and darkly poetic. Across her pair of albums, Apartment 12 and Two Kinds of Weather, she packs incisive reflections on everyday existence into a measured, smoky delivery whose restraint only heightens the impact of stories about people whose lives are quietly unraveling. Festival stages ranging from Seattle’s Bumbershoot to Austin’s SXSW, together with folk venues spanning both coasts, have hosted her performances; along the way she collected multiple songwriting honors, though a professional music career was never part of her original plan. The decade separating Apartment 12 from Two Kinds of Weather reflects someone who keeps a firm grip on personal choices and timing. “I’m not out for a 200 dates a year kind of career,” Pernick says. “I’m interested in a musical path that allows me to stay true to myself. Why did I stop playing (for ten years)? One has to know their own emotional and physical constitution; it takes lot out of you to (be on the road.)”
Born in Oak Park, MI, in 1962, Pernick grew up in a household striving to hold its middle-class footing. “My parents lived with my grandmother when I was little, in a middle-class neighborhood in the shadow of Detroit. I remember the riots and the curfew. Even though I was young, I watched Detroit decline and become a ghost town. It was an interesting historical time.” Her mother performed folk songs on guitar, an activity the young Pernick found faintly awkward whenever “Puff the Magic Dragon” or “Blowing in the Wind” rang through the house. “I have an older and younger brother who aren’t particularly musical. I envy kids who have older siblings who spark their musical interest by exposing them to amazing records. The eight-track in our car played the 5th Dimension and the Carpenters; I didn’t listen to the Beatles or Dylan.”
During her teenage years Pernick gravitated toward soul music and singer/songwriters, embracing Carole King, James Taylor, melancholy pieces such as Gilbert O’Sullivan’s jaunty ode to self-destruction “Alone Again (Naturally),” and the soulful catalog of the Isley Brothers, the Spinners, Dionne Warwick, and Motown. “When I was around 13 my brothers and I went to see Earth, Wind & Fire at Olympia Stadium. We had second-row seats and I remember the sax player was sweating and looking me in the eye and you could feel the power of the drummer. It was my first religious experience -- a lightning bolt in terms of the power of music.” A single round of guitar lessons at age eight and some piano instruction failed to hold her attention. “When I was about ten, I picked up the guitar in private. I was very shy kid. I was in the B group in chorus in junior high and high school, but I dropped out. I didn’t think I was a good singer.”
At nineteen, while enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Pernick brought her mother’s guitar to campus and found she liked playing it. Though soul remained a favorite, her circle favored folk and acoustic singer/songwriter material, so she followed that route. Through friends she met Dave Siglan, operator of the Ark, one of the longest-running folk clubs in the U.S. He offered her work, and her time there supplied an extensive musical apprenticeship. “I saw Odetta and couldn’t believe my ears or how my body felt around someone who had the gift of music that way. Then I saw Ferron and that changed my life. I didn’t think I could sing because I didn’t have a high pretty voice -- a typical woman’s voice. Ferron presented the possibility of being a poet and a different kind of singer. She could growl and whisper and sing in her own voice and it struck me. This is what I’m going to do. And it was a curse, ’cause I didn’t know to go about it.” After graduation Pernick staffed the Ark seven days a week, absorbing blues, singer/songwriters, bluegrass ensembles, Celtic music, and additional styles. Siglan appointed her MC, using the role to ease her stage fright. In the early ’90s she relocated to Montana, secured inexpensive housing, and began treating songwriting with greater seriousness. She shuttled between Montana, Seattle, and San Francisco, performing at open-mike nights in the Bay Area and Washington. Following a year of lengthy train journeys she settled in Seattle, where an open and supportive music community welcomed her.
Most of the material that became Apartment 12 had already been written in Montana, yet Pernick assumed a producer would be necessary for a proper album. “I met Wayne Horvitz and then heard an album he’d produced for Robin Holcomb, which was sonically and musically appealing to me. I called him and asked if he’d listen to a demo tape and he said yes.” Horvitz (Bill Frisell, John Zorn) responded enthusiastically to the songs, and the two produced Apartment 12 together. “I went to play at SXSW right after we finished the album,” Pernick recalls. “There was a guy from Shanachie at the concert and he asked me what I was doing.” She had intended to issue the record on her own imprint, but Shanachie acquired it. Pernick opened for Ferron across the U.S. and Canada during the early phase of the ’80s East Coast singer/songwriter surge, a vibrant period for performers, with most engagements concentrated on the East Coast. “It was hard to afford plane tickets and to play solo,” the singer recalls. “Eventually, I stopped playing, except locally, doing house concerts, clubs in Seattle, and maybe a couple of other gigs a year. I worked day jobs, went to poetry workshops to hone my lyrics, and forgot about recording.”
In 2002 Pernick’s circumstances shifted abruptly. “I was asleep and a fire exploded downstairs. It had such force at first I thought it was an earthquake. I opened the bedroom door and saw big flames licking up the walls. I understood why fire is considered an animal.” She escaped unharmed, and no one else was injured, yet the event triggered a burst of creativity. “The fire was a catalyst for changes that needed to happen. I was ending a relationship and it was a crazy time; I couldn’t imagine one more thing could happen and then my apartment burns down. But those darker moments led to renewal. I had my health and at the basic level I felt protected. I was physically OK and [the fire] put things in perspective.” In the fire’s wake the songs for Two Kinds of Weather emerged rapidly. “When I’m in the right mood, I sit with guitar or paper and pen and tap the vein. I wait to get quiet enough to find what’s floating around. I start with words or music, most often simultaneously, and start mumbling to see what’s here. Later, I put the guitar aside and work seriously on the lyrics.”
Horvitz again produced Two Kinds of Weather, balancing full-band arrangements with stripped-down acoustic versions. “Apartment 12 was more from my head, in my secret emotional language, putting the lens on tiny moments in my life. Weather is painted in broader strokes with more straightforward language. I dropped down into my core, into the belly of things, but it’s hard to explain. The experiences that led up to it made me realize I’m human and fallible. Striving for perfection and trying to get everything right, you can lose sight of yourself.” The resulting tracks remain understated and spare, spotlighting Pernick’s weathered vocals and generating a somber, foreboding atmosphere that is simultaneously harrowing and uplifting. “There is a sadness to my music. You can’t be happy and play it, but you have to be true to the sounds you’re trying to get your mouth and belly to make. And I want to get better as a writer. Ferron once said about songwriting -- is it honest, does it matter, and do I care? That was her measure of a good song, and it rings true for me.”
Born in Oak Park, MI, in 1962, Pernick grew up in a household striving to hold its middle-class footing. “My parents lived with my grandmother when I was little, in a middle-class neighborhood in the shadow of Detroit. I remember the riots and the curfew. Even though I was young, I watched Detroit decline and become a ghost town. It was an interesting historical time.” Her mother performed folk songs on guitar, an activity the young Pernick found faintly awkward whenever “Puff the Magic Dragon” or “Blowing in the Wind” rang through the house. “I have an older and younger brother who aren’t particularly musical. I envy kids who have older siblings who spark their musical interest by exposing them to amazing records. The eight-track in our car played the 5th Dimension and the Carpenters; I didn’t listen to the Beatles or Dylan.”
During her teenage years Pernick gravitated toward soul music and singer/songwriters, embracing Carole King, James Taylor, melancholy pieces such as Gilbert O’Sullivan’s jaunty ode to self-destruction “Alone Again (Naturally),” and the soulful catalog of the Isley Brothers, the Spinners, Dionne Warwick, and Motown. “When I was around 13 my brothers and I went to see Earth, Wind & Fire at Olympia Stadium. We had second-row seats and I remember the sax player was sweating and looking me in the eye and you could feel the power of the drummer. It was my first religious experience -- a lightning bolt in terms of the power of music.” A single round of guitar lessons at age eight and some piano instruction failed to hold her attention. “When I was about ten, I picked up the guitar in private. I was very shy kid. I was in the B group in chorus in junior high and high school, but I dropped out. I didn’t think I was a good singer.”
At nineteen, while enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Pernick brought her mother’s guitar to campus and found she liked playing it. Though soul remained a favorite, her circle favored folk and acoustic singer/songwriter material, so she followed that route. Through friends she met Dave Siglan, operator of the Ark, one of the longest-running folk clubs in the U.S. He offered her work, and her time there supplied an extensive musical apprenticeship. “I saw Odetta and couldn’t believe my ears or how my body felt around someone who had the gift of music that way. Then I saw Ferron and that changed my life. I didn’t think I could sing because I didn’t have a high pretty voice -- a typical woman’s voice. Ferron presented the possibility of being a poet and a different kind of singer. She could growl and whisper and sing in her own voice and it struck me. This is what I’m going to do. And it was a curse, ’cause I didn’t know to go about it.” After graduation Pernick staffed the Ark seven days a week, absorbing blues, singer/songwriters, bluegrass ensembles, Celtic music, and additional styles. Siglan appointed her MC, using the role to ease her stage fright. In the early ’90s she relocated to Montana, secured inexpensive housing, and began treating songwriting with greater seriousness. She shuttled between Montana, Seattle, and San Francisco, performing at open-mike nights in the Bay Area and Washington. Following a year of lengthy train journeys she settled in Seattle, where an open and supportive music community welcomed her.
Most of the material that became Apartment 12 had already been written in Montana, yet Pernick assumed a producer would be necessary for a proper album. “I met Wayne Horvitz and then heard an album he’d produced for Robin Holcomb, which was sonically and musically appealing to me. I called him and asked if he’d listen to a demo tape and he said yes.” Horvitz (Bill Frisell, John Zorn) responded enthusiastically to the songs, and the two produced Apartment 12 together. “I went to play at SXSW right after we finished the album,” Pernick recalls. “There was a guy from Shanachie at the concert and he asked me what I was doing.” She had intended to issue the record on her own imprint, but Shanachie acquired it. Pernick opened for Ferron across the U.S. and Canada during the early phase of the ’80s East Coast singer/songwriter surge, a vibrant period for performers, with most engagements concentrated on the East Coast. “It was hard to afford plane tickets and to play solo,” the singer recalls. “Eventually, I stopped playing, except locally, doing house concerts, clubs in Seattle, and maybe a couple of other gigs a year. I worked day jobs, went to poetry workshops to hone my lyrics, and forgot about recording.”
In 2002 Pernick’s circumstances shifted abruptly. “I was asleep and a fire exploded downstairs. It had such force at first I thought it was an earthquake. I opened the bedroom door and saw big flames licking up the walls. I understood why fire is considered an animal.” She escaped unharmed, and no one else was injured, yet the event triggered a burst of creativity. “The fire was a catalyst for changes that needed to happen. I was ending a relationship and it was a crazy time; I couldn’t imagine one more thing could happen and then my apartment burns down. But those darker moments led to renewal. I had my health and at the basic level I felt protected. I was physically OK and [the fire] put things in perspective.” In the fire’s wake the songs for Two Kinds of Weather emerged rapidly. “When I’m in the right mood, I sit with guitar or paper and pen and tap the vein. I wait to get quiet enough to find what’s floating around. I start with words or music, most often simultaneously, and start mumbling to see what’s here. Later, I put the guitar aside and work seriously on the lyrics.”
Horvitz again produced Two Kinds of Weather, balancing full-band arrangements with stripped-down acoustic versions. “Apartment 12 was more from my head, in my secret emotional language, putting the lens on tiny moments in my life. Weather is painted in broader strokes with more straightforward language. I dropped down into my core, into the belly of things, but it’s hard to explain. The experiences that led up to it made me realize I’m human and fallible. Striving for perfection and trying to get everything right, you can lose sight of yourself.” The resulting tracks remain understated and spare, spotlighting Pernick’s weathered vocals and generating a somber, foreboding atmosphere that is simultaneously harrowing and uplifting. “There is a sadness to my music. You can’t be happy and play it, but you have to be true to the sounds you’re trying to get your mouth and belly to make. And I want to get better as a writer. Ferron once said about songwriting -- is it honest, does it matter, and do I care? That was her measure of a good song, and it rings true for me.”
Albums
