Kristie Stremel

Kristie Stremel, a singer and songwriter raised in Hays, Kansas, first connected with music by performing Johnny Cash numbers alongside her father on guitar and by attending a Joan Jett concert in her hometown. At the age of fifteen she assembled her first garage band. After moving to Kansas City she began delivering solo acoustic performances that split evenly between original songs and covers. In the late 1990s the alt-rock band Frogpond invited her to join, and she supplied rhythm guitar and vocals on their Columbia Tri Star debut album Count to Ten, released in 1996 and produced by Everclear’s Art Alexakis. She exited the group the next year, started the power pop trio Exit 159, and put out both an EP and a full-length before the band disbanded in 2000. She returned to the studio at once to record The Detour EP with guitarist Chris Meck. In spring 2001 her debut solo album, the country-tinged All I Really Want, appeared on the Slewfoot label under the production of Lou Whitney.