Katie Pruitt Brings Frank Conversation on Religion to Park City Song Summit

The music industry is grueling, no question about it. While a typical music festival might focus on good times or discussions about the State of the Industry, the inaugural Park City Song Summit, taking place this week in Utah, seeks to balance joyful creative expression with serious conversations about mental health, physical self-care, and keeping the creative flame alive amid the tumult of making a living through music.

Park City Song Summit founder Ben Anderson (photo by Blake Peterson)

The festival’s founder, Ben Anderson, has lived through all of these struggles. A member of the Nashville jam band Aiko, he’s also been a practicing lawyer for 30 years. With the Park City Song Summit, he wants to return to his love of music while exploring multiple elements of live presentation and the overall festival experience.

Over the course of four days, the Park City Song Summit will host performances, master classes, and panel discussions. Artists like Father John Misty, Fruit Bats, Rising Appalachia, Cedric Burnside, and more will hold concerts, songwriters including Danny Myrick and Josh Kelley will perform in the round, and other musicians like Jason Isbell, Margo Price, and Gov’t Mule’s Warren Haynes will participate in conversations and workshops.

But one element that distinguishes the event is a series of Summit Labs, described on the event site as “discussions that dissect, illuminate, and interrogate the art and craft of music and songwriting … creat[ing] an environment of inclusivity that promotes discussion of mental health, substance recovery, representation, and social equity in addition to all things music.”

One of the labs will be hosted by country singer-songwriter Katie Pruitt, who first gained national attention with her 2018 EP OurVinyl Live. The song “Grace Has a Gun” was featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered, and Pruitt’s follow-up EP, 2020’s Expectations (ND story), further explored her experience growing up queer and Catholic and attending Belmont University in Nashville. While it is known now for its music program, the university has Christian origins.

In 2021, Pruitt launched a podcast called The Recovering Catholic that maps out her relationship with religion and brings in other artists to talk about their own journeys. Among her guests so far have been Leslie Jordan, Ruston Kelly, Jaime Wyatt, and queer contemporary Christian musician Semler.

Adia Victoria (photo by Huy Nguyen)

At the Park City Song Summit, Pruitt is scheduled to record a live taping of The Recovering Catholic with fellow singer-songwriter Adia Victoria. An accomplished artist who studied ballet, poetry, and acting in Paris, Brooklyn, and Atlanta before heading to Nashville, Victoria has released three albums of what she calls “gothic blues.” Her latest, 2021’s Southern Gothic (ND review), calls forth the oppressive heat and history of the South while claiming pride in growing up as a queer Black woman in traditional communities in South Carolina.

Before the Park City Song Summit, Pruitt spoke with No Depression about the podcast and to preview the episode to be recorded this week as a Summit Lab. She discussed her experiences as a queer, Christian-raised artist and how she learned to build a spiritual practice of her own.

What inspired you to start The Recovering Catholic and what do you enjoy about doing it?

I just kept having conversations — and not recording them — at bars or just with my friends. Watching things unfold in 2020 and in 2021 and seeing how religion and politics are just insanely intertwined in the worst ways (in my opinion) that don’t actually represent what the gospel says or what Jesus was trying to do was frustrating. As someone who doesn’t go to church or necessarily identify as Christian, I just felt like I wanted to have conversations about it and learn more and talk to people who were either still practicing Christians or grew up in it and how it affected them.

It’s taught me a lot. It’s shed a lot of different lights on it and I’ve learned things I didn’t expect to learn. And it’s just been a cool experience. It’s kind of like my way to hash it out with Christianity in real time and figure some shit out and hopefully help people navigate those complicated conversations.

Something you’ve mentioned in the past is the irony of Christianity preaching acceptance, yet there is so much gatekeeping — both in the faith and in the artistic communities surrounding it. Is that something you’ve seen in country music as well?

It’s kind of the same vibe, you know? They’re both patriarchal. The business is mostly — and it’s changing, I will say — run by old, rich, white dudes. And those dudes give their buddies jobs and then they just kind of pass it down. And then, in turn, the artists that they sign, at least in country, are mainly dudes talking about trucks and beer. We all kind of know that.

But there’s an undercurrent — it’s not an undercurrent anymore — of people talking about progress and change that is getting louder and louder. Americana, I feel, is the byproduct of the equal and opposite reaction to that kind of music, with people actually talking about progress and change and opposing the absent-minded shit that happens in basic top country songs, which is exciting to me.

There’s really been a change in how political themes are handled in the industry as well. Has anyone ever asked you to tone your politics down in your press interviews, if not your art?

I did have a guy tell me that I should pitch “Loving Her” to Keith Urban. I was like, “I don’t really think it works when a cis guy is singing it!”

Luckily, no one in my circle has ever told me that, which is awesome. But family members and people like that just don’t want me to be as explicit. My record [Expectations] was very personal and I did put a lot of my family’s struggle of acceptance in there, but that was part of the story and that was the truth. So at some point they had to reckon with that and eventually reached a good place about it.

How did you become aware of the Park City Song Summit? Is there anything in particular about the festival or the model that you’re really excited about?

I’m excited because I guess I’ve never been to a music festival that’s also a conference. I guess South by Southwest is kind of like that, but I haven’t really participated in panels. I feel like that adds like a whole ’nother element to that experience. There’s only so much you can say in songs. Conversation is long-form, you’re able to cover a lot more ground a lot faster.

How are you reconciling your relationship with Christianity?

My understanding of the Bible and God growing up was very rigid. God was the ultimate parent, this one dude who was in charge of everything. I don’t know if I believe in a literal dude floating in the sky behind a golden gate. When I felt like that image was used to keep me from expressing certain parts of myself and fill me with shame, I was like, “That can’t be anything good.” I had this existential crisis. The Bible can’t actually say that queer people are going to hell.

So I fell out of my faith. I just stopped showing up, and leaned into my spirituality rather than religion — finding the good in life outside of physically going to a building and asking for forgiveness [and] assigning agency to this higher power that I didn’t necessarily know if I believed in it or not.

I did a lot of investigating into the Bible just to communicate with my parents. They genuinely did believe that the “clobber verses” [verses used to condemn homosexuality] were real and actually set in stone. But I found that in 1946, there was a political choice to change the Bible from whatever was said before the King James version to intentionally use the word “homosexuality,” where before the text said “immorality,” which just meant non-consensual sex — not a consensual homosexual relationship.

But I don’t want to completely leave Christianity, because I do care about salvaging some of it. Especially in the South, religion is almost a social thing. Even if your parents aren’t going every Sunday, you at least went for Christmas and Easter.

Are you seeing younger people have this similar struggle with faith and sexuality?

I haven’t really had those kinds of conversations. I taught a songwriting class at Belmont over the summer, and it was heartbreaking trying to imagine myself at that age. Yeah, it gets better, but if I’m being honest with you, it’s always going to be hard because there’s always going to be a sector of society that’s telling you who you are is inherently wrong, and that’s going to fuck with you in one way or another. But I feel like the more confidence you gain, the more people you surround yourself with who are like-minded and kind and you lift each other up, it gets easier.

I feel like Adia talks about this, too, but the whole sentiment that we hear a lot of — “If you don’t like it, you can leave” — is an ignorant statement. Instead of leaving, you stay and you make it better. That’s how I feel about the South, or God, or America in general.

Being critical of something or holding something accountable is me caring about it and is me respecting it and believing in it enough that it can be an acceptable place for everyone.

What are some changes you’re hoping to see, or action steps you’re planning on taking?

Talking about it is what we can do. In my case, talking about it with people that don’t agree with you in a calm and respectful way. That might even be too optimistic, but that’s my hope. You can talk to people who agree with you all day and you’ll just agree, but I feel like it’s harder to have those conversations with people that I don’t agree with, and hoping that we can both open each other’s minds.