Kate Teague’s 4AM thoughts hit home on “I Feel Bad For My Dog”

Photo by Andrea Morales
July 19 2023

PRAISE FOR Kate Teague

“"...exquisitely dreamy..."”

Gorilla vs. Bear

“"...an absolute tour-de-force of raw emotion"”

The Line of Best Fit

“"Kate Teague makes work imbued with an enormous degree of emotional resonance””

Clash

“"all y’all lil rock fans are gonna love"”

FADER

“"Bridging the gap between classic indie rock and Kacey Musgraves country, this Alabama native weaves a quiet magic"”

FLOOD

“"The overall softness of the instrumentation when compared to its lyrical content is executed brilliantly... extremely piercing"”

Stereogum

1. Poison Mind
2. Annie Banks
3. Cause You Love Me
4. Actor
5. I Feel Bad For My Dog
6. Loose Screw

“I Feel Bad For My Dog” by Kate Teague is out now, buy/stream it here

Memphis, TN-based Kate Teague today shares “I Feel Bad For My Dog,” ahead of her forthcoming EP, Loose Screw out on August 11. Following the theme of her previous release, “Poison Mind,” which Stereogum said “is soft and sweeping and yearning,” “I Feel Bad For My Dog” matter-of-factly but tenderly accounts for the things that keep her tossing and turning in the middle of the night. Listen/watch “I Feel Bad For My Dog” HEREand pre-save her forthcoming EP Loose Screw HERE.

“I Feel Bad For My Dog” begins with Kate Teague’s soft yet controlled vocals paired with a slowed and steady drum march. However, her urgency escalates as the track continues; her desperate cry hits deeply as she sings, “If you knew I was lonely at night, If you knew I was thinking about you, would you still hold her tight, close your eyes and dream at night?” The track is a moment in time – the lyrics scribed as a first thought and unaltered as the song took shape through production – but it more largely calls attention to the “what-ifs” in life, the thoughts that haunt us the most.

Of the track, Kate Teague says, “I began writing this song at 4 am one morning. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up, sat at my computer, and started writing the synth line and lyrics. I finished it by the end of the day. It is one of the first songs I’ve arranged on my own and the only song on the EP that came from that original project on Garageband.”

Kate Teague vividly remembers a time in her early twenties in New Orleans, when she had this intuitive realization that there would be a period in her life when she’d feel incredibly alone. There is no doubt that it was a premonition of the time between the release of her self-titled EP in 2019 and today when she moved back to that same city. She’s traversed the South, learned how to build a new life from the ground up, and learned how to record and arrange music on her own. This EP is a result of those experiences. Ultimately, she brought the songs she wrote in New Orleans to Clay Jones (Modest Mouse, Counting Crows) in August 2021, where they were re-recorded in his home / cabin studio in Taylor, Mississpippi over the course of a month. “I am proud of what we created, and what these songs represent for me… These songs feel like the very beginning of learning what I want out of my life and my art and how to build that on my own.”

Aside from having fans at FADER, FLOOD, Gorilla Vs. Bear, The Line of Best Fit, CLASH, Stereogum, and more for her own gorgeous sonic world, Teague also runs a weekly radio show that airs on WYXR 91.7FM Memphis where she celebrates her peers and her idols equally. Having been based in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, she has absorbed the soundscape of each location she has passed through, constantly taking in new influences and garnering support from those communities in Oxford, Memphis, and beyond. She’s also opened for Fred Armisen’s “Comedy for Musicians,” collaborated with Thomas Dollbaum, Calvin Lauber (Julien Baker, Brother Moses, Harlan), and more.

Through these travels, trials, and moments of clarity amidst the fog, Kate Teague has carved her own niche as an artist from the South, making music that simultaneously honors and forcibly looks beyond her roots, which have offered her a home but also shown her some uglier moments. As a woman who finds herself in many spaces that are traditionally a boy’s club, she’s come into her own, and she’s more than ready to share this new chapter; “I feel more connected to myself as an artist than ever before.” You can catch the new Kate Teague live in Memphis this July, see below.

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