Kathryn Overall

Hi there, I’m Kathryn. I like autumn, earl grey tea, my sisters, second hand bookshops, silent retreats, Rialto movies, living in Tauranga, laughter, friendship and words and melody – especially together!

Not All The Leaves Are Falling is my first full singer/songwriter album. I had so much fun recording this personal collection of songs. Thanks for taking the time to drop by and have a listen.

Songwriter

I wrote my first song when I was 12 years old and felt like I had discovered some magical secret. I was utterly enchanted with the feeling I got from drawing on mysterious sources to put words and melody together. It’s a rush that has never got old. Like all art, songwriting is both method and mystery. I work on the method, but I’m in love with the mystery.

Singer/Songwriters I Love:
Sarah McLachlan, Dido, Jewel, Carrie Newcomer, Joni Mitchell, Sting, Brooke Fraser, Laura Marling, Luke Thompson, Passenger, Stu Larsen, Dave Baxter (Avalanche City), Ben Abraham, Jon Allen, Sufjan Stevens, James Taylor, Missy Higgins

Wordsmith

Not all of my words are set to melody. I have a storytelling + social marketing business called Engage Communications. I take a journalistic approach to marketing and communications, bringing equal parts strategy and soul to finding and sharing the human story within a brand. I enjoy telling true stories and am a big fan of narrative non-fiction and long-form articles. I occasionally write personal essays as a non-musical way of processing experience.

Sojourner

I have always been interested in the inner core of things. I am drawn to the world within, the hidden story, the deep places, the personal encounters of self with Spirit. My faith is a deep tap-root in my life and a golden through-line in my story. In recent years I have been increasingly drawn to the deep wells of contemplative Christian spirituality. Practices of silence, solitude, meditation and centring prayer have opened new vistas and new ways of being. As an intuitive introvert who feels deeply but tends to internalise, I have begun to recognise how connected songwriting and soul care are for me. Carrie Newcomer describes songwriting as a spiritual practice and the truth of that is dawning on me.

Not All The Leaves Are Falling

This personal collection of songs is my melodic ode to difficult endings and strained new beginnings, to getting lost and being found, to unlocked traumas and healing journeys, to deep, quiet and still places, to feet-finding, hope-finding, friend-making, community-building, to awakening, to spiritual graces, to reinvention and liminal spaces – and through it all, to my God, my source of everlasting love, my compass and my horizon, my deep silence and my brave expression.

Hope & Curiosity

Writing these songs helped me to become more present, both to myself and to God. They gave me a true and beautiful place to stand along the winding way. I hope in some small way they might do the same for you. Perhaps they may also help you to become present to your own heart and to the Divine Mystery we call God who is there in all our wanderings and wonderings.

Stories of love, loss and hope belong not to me, but to the human experience. I hope then, that you discover space for your own stories inside my words and find your own sense of hope within my melodies.

Yours truly,

Kathryn x

words&music