Featured Conversation: Katie McTigue of Pacing

Published on Jan 7, 2025

Today we are talking to Katie McTigue of Pacing about putting out her Real Poetry album on vinyl

Would you like to introduce yourself?

So I’m Katie McTigue. Pacing is mostly me a solo bedroom pop project that I started in like 2020 and it’s evolved, as those tend to do, where now my husband, Ben Kroc, has been more involved, which is awesome. He’s like, a real musician. I’m like a fraud, you know, it’s kind of just a coincidence that I’m doing music., I have stuff to say, and I would definitely be making some kind of art, right? It’s just kind of like a coincidence that it’s in the form of music. But Ben is a musician, and now we have a drummer, Joe Sherman, so that’s been the local band. We play in San Jose and San Francisco, around here a good bit. That’s just been the past year. So I started putting out the first record, or first full length. It was basically all me just figuring out how to make music on my laptop. And then the second one, Real Poetry ended up being more folky, because we were moving across the country, and I just had a ukulele. For whatever reason, it ended up kind of back to my roots, because I’m from Florida, and I grew up on bluegrass and folk music, like Stephen Foster. There’s a Folk Festival I would go to every year, and then I kind of branded it as anti folk, which is kind of like Kimya Dawson, the big influence, Sidney Gish, Paul Baribeau. I kind of realized I was kind of picking up like what they had been doing, so now I’m calling it an anti folk project.

So it’s been a little over a year since you put out Real Poetry  (Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen.)

 Yeah, it came out a little over a year ago. 

So you did something special for the anniversary. So let’s talk about that.

We had a birthday party at my favorite venue, Jade Cafe. It’s a Dim Sum restaurant. I love the people that own it so much. They’re so sweet. And it’s a Heavy Lemon show. Heavy lemon is the local DIY show. The booker is my friend Chris, and I actually also help out. I’m helping now with communication stuff and social media.

I think the party was good. You know, shows are so weird. I feel like I kind of like, I haven’t screwed up yet. I haven’t screwed up yet. But it was really good. Oh my god. Like it was such a good lineup, my you know, my friend Melody, Career Woman, played solo, and she’s incredible. And my friend Christian they’re always like a party. So there were excellent vibes. And I think our set went well. We played the whole album. We made everyone sit on the ground, and we had cake and balloons and stuff. I think it went well. 

What made you decide to put out vinyl for Real Poetry a year later?

Well my buddy Mike Park of Asian Man Records is my neighbor. It’s hilarious.It’s probably the only reason he signed us is because we live right down the street from him. We’re his favorite band in a one mile radius (laughs). But we’re working on a new album that’s going to be out on Asian Man sometime next year, I think. And he wanted to get something out on vinyl to introduce Pacing to his record club subscribers. And so he was like, maybe you should do a compilation or something. And I was like, now I want to do the album (Real Poetry). When I designed that album cover, I was like, damn, this would look sick on vinyl.

You took such care in packaging the CD. It was a really nice package you put together. I was wondering if you’re doing something equally as creative for the vinyl release.

For the party, Mike ordered 40 test presses for the record because we weren’t gonna have the vinyl in time for the show. We were still waiting on the actual records after we got the test presses, you know? So I screen printed the test press jackets and made the jackets myself. So I’m kind of,continuing my DIY roots of making CDs and stuff. 

Do you feel like it’s necessary at this point to put something out on vinyl as well as CD because there is a resurgent interest in vinyl?

I actually love CDs. I probably never would have done vinyl if it wasn’t for the fact that Mike (Asian Man Records) does vinyl. That’s what he does, you know, he loves vinyl, and it’s a great opportunity to do it with him. He does such a good job of everything, he’s been doing it for years, and he has all the distributors in place and stuff. But I probably otherwise, like, I love CDs. I’m a big fan of CDs. I feel like they’re coming back. Vinyl is so intimidating, it’s so expensive. You have to have, usually, a minimum of a couple hundred to make it work. That takes forever. You know, the plants are expensive and inaccessible. Vinyl is so intimidating, and CDs are what I grew up on. Like, that’s what I was listening to in my car, you know, in high school. And while I have a real soft spot for CDs. I also love vinyl.

I think it’s a really wonderful format to interact with. My husband has a huge record collection. Vinyl is a special thing, you know? It’s like a splurge kind of thing that I really love.

Are you going to do both CDs and vinyl for the new record?

I think we’ll do vinyl on Asian Man again, which will be really cool. Yeah. But I do like  CDs too. And I kind of want to keep doing like, my little DIY CDs, you know, in addition.

Pacing is the songwriting and recording project of Katie McTigue (she/her). Various Small Flames wrote that she “follows in the playful, tongue-in-cheek tradition of the likes of Kimya Dawson, yet always nudges the ideas further to be more than mere twee humour or sardonic fun.” Fans and new listeners alike often remark that her anxious, confessional lyrics are “a little too relatable.”

In October 2023, Pacing released her first full-length album Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen. It was named Best Folk Music by Bandcamp, and cemented Pacing as a leader in a new wave of anti-folk music reminiscent of the early 2000s New York scene; one born in an era that is distinctly Very Online. Pacing is based in San Jose, CA and plays shows around the Bay Area as a trio with Ben Krock on guitars and Joe Sherman on drums.