Rock pianist

Kat Downs is a pianist, vocalist and songwriter who makes up half of the San Francisco hard-rock duo Sit Kitty Sit, along with drummer Mike Thompson. After their 2014 release, Everlasting Fire, Downs experienced a string of difficulties—among them a cancer scare, divorce and depression. The aftermaths of these experiences are distilled in the duo’s new album, Tectonic. Sit Kitty Sit plays June 9 at Pignic.

When you first got together in 2010, how did you decide to play rock with no guitar?

I had been working on a solo album where every song was in a different genre, and I asked [Mike Thompson] to play with me on one song. I had always wanted to hear what it would sound like if you added theatrical prog metal drumming to Rachmaninoff. And I tried to find that. … I couldn’t find it, so I was like, “Well crap, now I have to write it,” so I did. It was just supposed to be a one-off thing. That was the song “The Push.” We played together so naturally that we kind of freaked each other out. And then, about nine months or so later, I had gone though the rest of my library. And I realized that … my style of writing just fit that double-percussion thing so well, that I reached out and asked him if he wanted to continue that experiment.

Did either one of you come from a classical background?

Yes, I started studying when I was six, and piano was my main instrument until high school, and I started playing flute in fourth grade, and flute was my major instrument in both high school and college. So I’m actually a classically trained flautist.

You’ve gone through some difficult times. What’s it been like processing those and incorporating them into your work?

Basically, I sat down and talked with Mike first. I knew it was time for us to put out a record, but there was just nothing there. You know how it is when you have someone you’re working with all the time. It’s not just one conversation. It’s one conversation that lasts like a month. So, we had sat down at one point with a piece of paper. We were still kind of coming out of it at that point, so stuff was still pretty raw. It was like, “What do you remember? What pops off the page at you when you scan back through that part of your life?” And we basically just wrote down all the emotions that we felt. There was rage—more than once. That’s why there’s more than one song about rage. It’s like, you’re very angry, and then you chill out for a while, and then you get angry again, so, that was how we did it.

Stress and productivity are a pretty tough combination. It sounds like you just decided to keep up the pace and work. Is that how you went about it?

Yes. Up to that point we had been putting out a record every two years. It was just a personal goal of ours. No one was holding us accountable. It was just us. But we were already a year late. We knew that … having something to focus on would kind of keep the train moving. … It took like an extra year to put the record out. That’s why there was a four-year gap between this record and that one.

Have you built fan bases in other cities besides San Francisco?

Oh! Reno! Absolutely. Our fan base in Reno is—they’re ecstatic people. I think how it happened is, we used to basically start and end most of our national tours in Reno. So, we ended up getting this very family-esque following there, which is really cool. We’ve been on the Worst Little Podcast three or four times now. We recorded at Dog Water Studios with Rick. That whole thing was recorded in Reno. It’s like our home away from home.