专辑简介

Katie Grace Helow came across a classical guitar at the yard sale of a friend. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in a long time; the guitar was covered in dust, one of the strings was missing, and the remaining strings were dull. Since the missing string made it difficult to play standard guitar chords, Katie decided to approach this guitar differently than she had ever approached a guitar. She dropped the strings to an open A minor tuning, and searched for new chord formations while plucking the strings with her fingers. The music that began to emerge was very different than the aggressive, percussive strumming style she had been using for years on her steel string; this music felt soft, watery and haunting. She bought the guitar, and even after cleaning and restringing it, kept it as it was when she first played it: strange tuning, missing string and all.

From this guitar came every track on her most recent album, On Time and The Ocean. Recorded by Matt Welch in a garage apartment in Fall of 2009, it is an inward journey exploring themes such as change, loss, and coping. The ocean, which has always been a source of inspiration in Helow's life as she’s grown up on the southeast coast, is also a consistent theme in the album, and this provides much of the imagery, both in the lyrics as well as the album art.