Loose Cattle

Loose Cattle is led in tandem by Michael Cerveris and Kimberly Kaye - a onetime couple, enduring friends and lifelong working artists. The band was formed more than ten years ago in New York City, but found its momentum when the pair moved to New Orleans, broke up and were welcomed into its warm (and expert) musical community. They joined forces with Rene Coman and Doug Garrison, 30-year veterans of the Latin-inflected roots-rockers the Iguanas and Alex Chilton’s former rhythm section; they also roped in fiddler and vocalist Rurik Nunan as a regular, plus a host of repeat co-conspirators from a bench that, in the Crescent City, is even deeper than the Mississippi that runs through it.

Kaye is conservatory-trained in trumpet, jazz vocals and musical theater; she also traveled the Warped Tour circuit in the late ‘90s, playing with teenage ska-punk bands. Cerveris toured as a guitarist with Husker Du’s Bob Mould and scooped up a pair of Tonys and a Grammy Award during a stage-and-screen career that’s included the title roles in Tommy,Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Sweeney Todd; close work with composers from Pete Townshend and Elton John to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Steven Sondheim; and a rogue’s gallery of cult-favorite weirdos on Fox, HBO and Netflix. “Part of the reason why we gravitated towards Americana and country music was that the tradition was so full of complicated characters, and storytelling,’ Cerveris says. They’ve played Lincoln Center, NPR’s Mountain Stage and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival; both Rolling Stone Country and No Depression nodded to their 2017 album Seasonal Affective Disorder on its best-of lists. 

Loose Cattle are inheritors of the progressive politics and compassionate humanity of folk and country truth-tellers past and present, some of whom have become friends: both Lucinda Williams and Patterson Hood guest on Someone’s Monster, produced by John Agnello (Son Volt, Dinosaur Jr.) as their debut for the mighty Southern indie Single Lock Records. The album ably takes on these weird American times with tenderness, rigor, empathy, and guitars. The 2024 release was a hit with critics and audiences alike, spawning four singles receiving steady radio play across the country and finishing the year at 85 on the Americana Album Chart top 200, and 10th in No Depression Magazine's Year End Readers' Poll top 25 of 2024