“We may never actually know what it is like to be another person, but somewhere in their story there’s always going to be a piece of our own story in it.”
With Other People’s Stories, singer-songwriter Kat Reinhert moves well beyond the realm of the strictly autobiographical. It’s a collection of five tracks (galileo, Grace&henry, Holly, Opaline and Philadelphia) that are all about the lives, the choices and the private experiences of other people. Some of the stories are based on real experiences, some of them are just stories that started with a passing observation and then developed into a whole imagined life. What they all have in common is a sense of emotional honesty and an interest in the moments that make up a life: relationships, loss, regret, growing older, the ability to persevere, the courage to do things, the need to belong. It’s not about presenting life from one perspective. It’s about looking outwards, looking at the lives of others and realising how much they have in common with our own. The central question of the EP is what makes a life matter and who gets to decide that? That question is the very foundation of the collection and it also raises the question of what songwriting actually is. A song doesn’t necessarily have to be about the writer’s own life in order to be a deeply personal thing. “The most powerful stories are not always the ones we have lived ourselves but the ones that help us to understand someone else’s life and perhaps our own” Is the very essence of the project. It’s an exploration of the human condition through the lens of other people’s lives, their memories, their experiences and their possibilities. The gap between another person’s reality and our own is actually quite small.
The five track sequence provides the project with the opportunity to go into different characters and different perspectives with each title opening a door into Reinhert’s world of storytelling. “Galileo”, “Grace & Henry”, “Holly”, “Opaline” and “Philadelphia” form the narrative spine of the record and the overarching themes provide the link between the individual tracks. The artist describes the record as a kind of convergence between intimate character studies, imagined lives and personal reflection. It’s about people in search of connection, of meaning, of redemption and of home. Some of them are clearly haunted by what’s happened to them, others are trying to get away from the past and others are trying to find the courage to go forward. It’s about the space between knowing someone and imagining their life. We all know that we often run into fragments of other people’s lives and we don’t know what’s behind that. A conversation, a moment, a detail can suggest an entire world of emotion and decision. That’s where Reinhert’s interest lies. That’s where he starts from. He takes that uncertainty and he uses it as a springboard to explore what might be out there. Musically it’s very much a traditional singer songwriter record with Joni Mitchell, Sarah Bareilles and John Mayer as the main influences. It’s also very much in the tradition of the jazz songwriters with Nicole Zuraitis, Laila Biali and Bill Evans as the others who come to mind. It’s a musical identity that sits somewhere between popular song and jazz. It’s got the kind of songs that are very engaging, very well written with a strong sense of melody and very evocative vocals at its heart. Rather than treating those influences as separate things, Reinhert has brought them all into one space and the story is still the thing that’s paramount. The songs are all about the characters and the arrangements are an integral part of the storytelling.
An especially significant part of Other People’s Stories is Reinhert’s expanded role as producer. This is her first multi-tracked recording as the sole producer and it’s a very important step in her artistic evolution. Her approach to production is to treat it as an extension of the songwriting rather than as a technical stage that comes after the song is written. The arrangements are all designed to serve the character of the story and the emotional arc of the story so that the musical decisions are in fact part of the storytelling. She’s the one leading the recording with vocals, guitar and various other sounds with Perry Smith and Jesse Lewis on guitar, Matt Aronoff on bass, Ross Pederson on drums and Matt Cossey on organ for ‘Opaline”. It was mixed by Aaron Nevezie at Bunker Studios in NYC and mastered by Alex DeTurk at the same studio. The musicianship on the record is a very important part of the creative vision which is very much rooted in Reinhert’s songwriting and her production. Other People’s Stories is also the second project in a five year artistic arc (following her EP Normal) and it continues a body of work that includes the 2021 album Dead Reckoning and a series of singles in 2024. With 20 years of experience as a songwriter and musician she brings a very particular blend of poetic storytelling and jazz sensibility to the record. She’s also Professor of Songwriting at Berklee College of Music and that underlines her dedication to the craft and to the idea of helping other people find their own voice. The real enduring quality of the EP though is the central idea that every life is complex and that every person deserves to be seen in a way that goes beyond the version of themselves that the outside world can see. That’s the invitation that Other People’s Stories makes. It’s an invitation to listen more closely, to imagine more generously and to recognise that we’re all fundamentally human.
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