Meet KAT LEONARD of Wonder Women LA!
( Hey, that’s me! 🙂 )

Kat Leonard in third person is a dare duel between Madonna and k.d. lang, madcap and profound. Kat is a feisty performance pop dynamo whose music oscillates unpredictably between heartfelt and hilarious, leaving you with the drunken joy of a sugar rush.  Kat & The Mp3’s debut CD, A Depper Kind Of Love, was released June 9, 2011 (Johnny Depp’s birthday!) in conjunction with the one-hour live multimedia live show inspired by loving and losing Johnny Depp. Kat is Artistic Director of Let’s Make Good Productions and WonderFest, the festival of workshops and concerts spreading empowerment through art. At the first ever Wonder Women LA on Sept 7, 2014, Kat performs a few ditties and co-hosts along with the lovely April Snow. 

An interview with myself:

What is empowerment to you? Realizing that empowerment is actually a commodity available to us at all times and we just need to take a good hold. “Poor is the man whose pleasure depends on the permission of another.” -Madonna

What does being an artist mean to you? Being an artist means it’s difficult to settle for the average. It is being constantly exposed to and fed by an open, abundant and sometimes chaotic channel with an insight that allows one to see and feel things before they are pointed out by someone else, with a force that is electric and compoundable. It is a physical need to analyze and express. It is a gift that keeps giving that you cannot keep in its box. It feels like a physical responsibility to share it, like a helpful beast roaring out of ones soul to explode, to share, to sooth and engage others in a similar power.

What is your career? What are the greatest challenges and greatest rewards of your career? Advice to others embarking on similar career? I have made a career out of doing my art on the side and holding down a job to pay the bills. The greatest challenges of this are the time away from my art and the nagging question to myself, “What if I did my art full time all these years? Would I have made it bigger than my pants by now?” The rewards of this are that I don’t feel desperate to make my art to pay the bills and I can say no to projects that don’t serve the art. It also allows me to live daily in a moderate world meeting characters and experiencing life to later analyze and electrify in a song or standup bit. Advice to others: Just like investing money, when you invest in your career, decide for yourself how much risk you can bear and how much security you require to feel fulfilled on an average daily basis. Feeling stifled is just as painful as feeling vulnerable and we need to balance these in a way we can live with. Taking risks and getting out of our comfort zones is absolutely crucial but needs to be balanced with a sense of calm so that our energy can be focussed on higher endeavours than mere survival.

What would you say to your 8-year-old self? Eat whatever you like but stop when you’re no longer hungry.

What would you say to your 80-year-old self? Pass the chips! We don’t have much time!

What would people be surprised to know about you? I have a degree in Science, Biology. I am sometimes prone to panic attacks in crowds and noise.

What is your favourite quote? “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt 

I have always been drawn to the balance between light and dark and also to the pensive and tired. This is a picture of me that I feel exudes both.
I’ve been noticing of late that my bottom lip is quite asymmetrical.

This is one of my favourite videos of me– it will be a long time before I do another one like this because I almost barfed after shooting it. For real!

DANCEFLASH: My version of Flashdance 🙂

*****

You can discover more of my musings, music and dancing all over this blog, actually! Go ahead, click about! 🙂

You can follow me  @Katbandoo on Twitter, Instagram, and down the street quite easily because I’m not that fast a walker.

Come to Wonder Women LA on September 7th at Arcadia Blues Club!
We promise you a good time! You can pick up CDs there too!

You can find out more about the show and the rest of the Wonder Women LA lineup here!

Click for tix to Wonder Women LA!