A Twin Cities singer who has often played venues in the Hudson area has advanced to the fourth and live round of The Voice, which is no surprise to her local fans.
OK, now Kat Perkins as an update has made it through the fifth round, too, covering Magic Man by Heart — a rock band led by Ann and Nancy Wilson that as a little known fact also got its start, in part, singing in Wisconsin watering holes decades back. There’s was the Howard Johnson’s lounge in Wausau, which was advertised in the local paper with postage-stamp-size ads sporting just their faces.
But not to digress, Perkins had changed her look, too, ditching the lip ring she’d sported in the earlier rounds.
One of her local fans, Thomas Bothun, said he would have liked to have seen more of the less is more in her new look — going back to her old trademark fishnet tights, short skirt and puss and kitty boots.
Bothun wasn’t surprised to see”Perkins cover a song by K.T. Tunstall to advance to the third round earlier in the month, since he had seen her perform this and at least one other tune by Tunstall a number of times with her band, Scarlet Haze. Over an almost ten-year period during which he’d seen her perform, that’s a lot of hits covered.
Bothun added he was a bit shagrinned to see that the Tunstall song selected included the lyrics “You’re Not The One For Me,” from “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” since in former days, Perkins had the habit of sometimes looking his way if she’d spot him in the crowd.
Perkins also had a habit of once in a while approaching someone like Bothun between sets and giving them a peck on the cheek.
That kind of interaction also made her popular with Bill Heffron, who attended concerts in Hudson for decades and later moved to New Richmond and is an active part of the local scene there. With the recent news, Heffron got a reminder from Bothun and others of late that he still owes them copies of an especially cool video of Perkins he shot (more on than later).
Bothun also said about that recent individual contest on The Voice, that it was noteworthy she triumphed while going up against a duet, not just a single vocalist like herself.
That upward movement was allowed, in part, because judge and coach Adam Levine, of Maroon 5 fame, seems to have a thing for Perkins, Bothun said. It was he who exercised his option earlier in the week to get her to advance, the last singer of the night to do so, by performing an improvised version of Journey’s Open Arms while wearing a sparkly black dress. Her sex-appeal was one of the things that initially gained her fame amongst Twin Cities and Hudson area audiences, and it was sometimes bolstered by singing in a catsuit that complimented her long dark locks, complete with tail, especially on or around holidays such as Halloween or New Years.
Perkins got as far as the third round on the strength of two Fleetwood Mac standards, the second contest of which also involved a duet. Both songs wowed the judges and they raved about her to the point of fighting over who would get to have her on their team. The first song covered, in live auditions, was by Stevie Nicks, Gold Dust Women, and Perkins’ long-held, wavering notes near the end served notice that The Voice had a frontrunner.
When the announcement of Perkins’ initial appearance on The Voice was making its way around downtown Hudson nightclubs in the weekend before the airing, patrons began digging up their old videos of her band playing local venues like Dibbo’s. Some even suggested trying to get them on You Tube.
One of those was Heffron, who walked into the front room of Dick’s Bar and Grill around 11 p.m. that Sunday and immediately began spreading the news to anyone whom he thought might be interested. Heffron said he was soon able to find a number of pieces of video footage he’d shot. One was taken of Heffron himself, as he and a friend dancing right in front of the Dibbo’s stage — with Perkins in the immediate background singing a number.
Chris Martin of Coldplay has been selected as a surprise celebrity coach and his musical style should be a good fit for Perkins, Bothun said. “She looked just giddy when she saw him (introduced).”
Perkins married her drummer in Scarlet Haze a few years ago, and took a few years off to work as a nanny in Edina, Minn., but the itch of the stage got her to come back, via a recent move to Los Angeles. Local followers had last seen her at a farewell Dibbo’s performance, but since then at times wondered aloud whatever had become of Scarlet Haze. But now “Kat,” as she is affectionately known, is back with more songs and even a few more tattoos — don’t tell Bothun’s mom that. She had said she was glad to see the lip ring go.
“I want to thank you for taking me to another level and believing in me,” she told Levine on stage. Another principal for the Voice, in laying the groundwork for things to come, said all the remaining contestants — and there are not many — all have different styles, but Kat is all rock ‘n roll.That even for a nanny, as Levine pointed out.