Katy Moffatt

Despite never achieving mainstream country success, Katy Moffatt built a loyal cult audience among roots-music listeners while earning widespread critical admiration for fusing country, folk, rock, pop, and blues. Born in Fort Worth, TX, in 1950 as the younger sister of singer/songwriter Hugh Moffatt, she began performing in local coffeehouses before enrolling at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM. While a student there, she appeared in the 1971 film Billy Jack, after which she left school and relocated to Corpus Christi, TX, taking a job at a television station and performing with a local blues band. When a hurricane destroyed the station, she moved first to Austin and then to Colorado, securing a steady role singing on a Denver radio station in 1973. That exposure led to a 1975 contract with Columbia, for which she released the country-rock albums Katy in 1976 and Kissin' in the California Sun in 1978, the latter featuring members of the Allman Brothers. Neither album achieved commercial breakthrough, so she sustained her career as a backup singer alongside Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffett, Poco, John Prine, Tanya Tucker, and Lynn Anderson, among others.

Signing with the independent Permian label in 1983, Moffatt cut several well-received singles; although she issued no album and scored no major chart success, she received an Academy of Country Music Female Vocalist of the Year nomination in 1985. After Permian closed, she moved to Rounder subsidiary Philo and delivered her label debut Walkin' on the Moon in 1989. The more electrified, rock-oriented follow-up Child Bride arrived in 1990, and both recordings began attracting attention within the roots-music community. She also recorded the duet album Dance Me Outside with brother Hugh and saw the live set Indoor Fireworks issued on the overseas Red Moon label. Her next solo album, The Evangeline Hotel—originally titled The Greatest Show on Earth—was widely praised by critics as her finest work and an instant classic, yet it marked her final release for Philo. A pair of Watermelon albums, 1994's Hearts Gone Wild and 1996's Midnight Radio, did not sustain that critical momentum, though 1998's Angel Town on HMG earned positive notices. She followed with the straight-ahead country effort Loose Diamond on Hightone in 1999 and, in 2001, issued the collection of traditional and traditional-style western songs Cowboy Girl on Shanachie.