Katie Toupin

Explanation The headliner of the night was Katie Toupin. Quite frankly, I actually didn't know too much about Katie Toupin or her music beforehand. My Spotify was giving me her music for a while, but I didn't really make the connection until around when I saw the show pop up a month or so before. As a slight tangent, I do feel like I often consume music less actively now than I used to. I wonder to myself sometimes if this is a function of the music being more of a commodity to me, it's something I pay for but don't actively curate. As a result I feel less connected to it than in the past when I was actively looking for and curating the musical experiences I was listening to. At some point I'll probably talk more about Spotify and my opinions and feelings about music streaming but this isn't that post.

Getting back to Katie Toupin, her music is best described as Americana. It's both powerful and vulnerable. It's the type of music that first grips you with its style, a bit drawling, a bit country, but keeps you with its substance. For her shows, she's expressive and moving with graceful movements. She doesn't necessarily choose to take up the entire stage on her own, preferring to move towards the other guitarist or bassist at times relatively sparingly. Like some other acts, she likes to sprinkle in anecdotes about her life and about the various songs which is always a fun part of live shows that separates them from a pure musical experience.

I ended up taking quite a few pictures during her set with my general emphasis actually being on the guitarist to her right (the audience's left). My general approach I've taken when taking pictures during a show is to spend the first song or two enjoying the music and deciding whether I want to take pictures and if so what I want to focus on. Generally, this means understanding the lighting and where/when it shines. It also means what parts of the band and what position I need to put myself to attempt the pictures I'm thinking about. For this show, while I did take a good number of Katie herself, I really liked how much the guitarist was getting into the show and how expressive he was.

For this first part, I want to talk about the first picture I took of her set. Unlike what I just stated, this picture actually ends up more focused on her than him. As with many of my other live music pictures, I like leaning into motion and action where I can. With her swinging her head back and lit from the lights, I really like the energy of this picture. The contrast between her in the light and the guitarist and drummer back in the dark is also a nice touch. Overall, it's a fun picture that I feel is really expressive and descriptive. As much as I like the more "normal" live music pictures, I find myself not as interested in taking them and much more interested in taking pictures like these. While rougher, they're full of life and capture a moment that's hard to pose or reproduce.