Genre:
Indie,
Pop,
Rock
Hometown: St. Louis, MO
For more than 30 years, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Ken Kase has been delighting fans and defying musical expectations through a wide range of musical projects from his adopted home base in St. Louis, MO.
A native of Trumbull, Connecticut, Kase grew up in a fertile musical home. His mother was a classical violinist, and his brother, Chris Kase is a jazz trumpeter and music educator who lives in Madrid. Ken taught himself to play guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums before he was 18 years old, while soaking up influences from every genre: Bach to the Beatles, bebop to blues, bar-bands and beyond.
All of that informed Kase's own music, which defies easy categorization. The common thread: each of his projects through the years has garnered critical acclaim and shown the hallmarks for which he's come to be known: exceptional musical skill, inventive yet accessible songwriting, and a keen sense of adventure and fun.
That's held true from his early years fronting the playful/soulful Groupers, through The Ken Kase Group's heyday as one of St. Louis' most revered live acts, and his adjunct and ongoing membership in power-pop dynamos, The Sun Sawed in 1/2
More recent projects have continued to showcase Kase's diversity — from the more subtle shades of his work for The Birthday People with Mike Schrand to the funkier, jazzy vibes of his instrumental and experimental Corpus Alienum releases.
The multi-talented Kase is also a writer, and a photographer. The latter is a surprise to some given that he's legally blind, the result of a rare congenital condition called achromatopsia, which he's written about in song and via print/online.