After months of stark silence, Kathryn "Kat" Moore's musical existence hung precariously on the first few bars of a 150-year-old Christian hymn.
Moore, singer and pianist for the Super Saturated Sugar Strings, had completed a course of treatment for vocal nodules that included more than two months of rest, during which she spoke for only a few days and was silent the remaining time.
Her proving ground was a fitting tune, "How Can I Keep From Singing?," a gospel song revived by Pete Seeger in the middle of the last century and adopted into the Quaker musical tradition.
Moore's uncertainty was apparent as she tentatively hummed the melody at her mother's house in Phoenix.
"The anticipation was fierce because, through all that time, I was never really able to imagine singing," she said.
But the result was decisive – she would be able to sing – allowing a return to her career in music.
And when she returned a little over a year ago, Moore experienced an unprecedented burst of creativity. The Sugar Strings, one of Alaska's most popular and inventive bands, were on hiatus while husband-wife duo Carlyle and Theresa Watt had a child and violin player Miriah Phelps traveled in Asia.
So Moore established The Forest That Never Sleeps, a solo ballads project.
"After that vocal rest, everything came out on piano," she said. "I started playing solo out of necessity. I didn't realize I loved performing until I started playing with the Sugar Strings. When two members of the band were pregnant, it pared down our performance schedule. I found I was performing a lot less. I had to get those ants out of my pants."
The Forest That Never Sleeps started as an outpouring of ideas and experiences from her vocal break, featuring Moore's most frequent and reliable theme – love.
"It started as a piano project," Moore said. "A majority of the songs I was composing were ballads, slow songs. They were rich harmonic songs with strange melodies. (That sound) lends itself to mostly ballad writing, love songs. When I put them on piano, I could get a darker sound."
While sonically the songs Moore created are lush, the themes are often bare and autobiographical.
"I was dating someone when I left," she said. "It was from the distance and the silence. That relationship ended, but I found I'd become closer in some relationships. The songs reflected a lot of tumult from changes that happened over the silence, including falling for a friend, but it was not mutual."
The songs gain power from Moore's unflinching personal narratives. She said her love songs have transformed from romantic to realistic.
"From a writing perspective, I share really intimate things," she said. "The songs are autobiographical. I've tried to write some fiction. It just didn't take. It was so inauthentic. You could hear my heart wasn't in it."
Moore said the songs are confessional, but at the same time conversational – addressing topics she feels are universal.
"I love to share with people and I'm very comfortable with expressing vulnerability," she said. "I'm confident with all my assets and all my flaws. I'm not a perfect person. I write a lot out of a needing to decompress and have some catharsis. If there's a situation where I'm happy or sad, I need to get that out. There's a way that connects with people. We all go through the same experiences – joy, longing, happiness, pain, regret. For me, the only way I can share them is honestly."
A vocal hiatus
"I started playing piano by ear when I was 5 or 6," she said. "Outside of your meat and potatoes, I never really took off with the reading."
She came to Alaska in her late 20s with the idea she would devote herself to a passion – music.
But that meant expanding her base of knowledge past her self-taught methods. At University of Alaska Anchorage, Moore studied piano with Dr. Timothy Smith and jazz under Karen Strid-Chadwick.
"(Smith) was great," Moore said. "I learned a lot of classical technique stuff. He was my first piano teacher ever. (Strid-Chadwick) was one of the main reasons I stayed in college. She was very practical and reassuring."
Dr. Mari Hahn started working with Moore on vocal training.
"She was really helpful to get me to understand my voice," Moore said. "I still meet with her to work things out and expand my voice."
But there were already signs that maintaining her voice would be an ongoing and possibly, a losing battle.
Moore found out she had vocal nodes about four years ago. "I started singing at UAA and I was losing my voice all the time. I had just started teaching music for a living and they told me I had nodes."
Vocal rest was recommended, but between her teaching and studying at UAA, Moore said it wasn't feasible and quit after a week of silence.
"I disregarded it then," she said. "I started teaching more, singing more and it just escalated."
Finally in the spring on 2014, her band members helped convince Moore that her vocal issues would only get worse if left unattended. After working through the summer, she headed to Philadelphia to stay with her sister, where she spent more than two months without speaking.
"It was a weird time," she said. "If I was going to persevere in music, my voice was really one of the assets that could help get me work."
While she wasn't able to sing, Moore planned on piano and songwriting. But she soon found improving her musical repertoire almost impossible.
"Without trying to use my voice, even playing songs I'd written, I couldn't play," she said. "I wasn't doing the vocal motion. My hands fell apart. I spent all that time in silence, working on technique. But every time I sat down to play a song, it was crumbling. It affected the way I tried to write music. I started writing poetry and drawing. The creative juices had to come out some way."
Since she completed the vocal rest, she's also had to make changes to maintain her voice.
"I've changed my diet considerably," she said. "I've also had to pare down my social life. I'm an extrovert, but sometimes I don't go out because I know how much I'll talk."
From necessity
After the break, the Sugar Strings have started to work on new material, recently completing a residency at the Bunnell Gallery in Homer.
"To be all together and have this creative time is incredible," Moore said.
But she has plans for The Forest That Never Sleeps, including an album with instrumentalist/producer Chad Reynvaan tentatively titled "TOIL (The Ones I Love). Moore will take the project on the road in the Lower 48, opening for and performing with
Portland-based Small Souls, a collaboration of Bryan Daste and Brian Rozendal.
"The project will continue," Moore said. "It started out of necessity It's allowed me to not only perform when we aren't able to play as much, but to travel more. It's allowed me to get to some different places and to travel."
Kat Moore in The Forest That Never Sleeps
When: Doors 5:30 p.m. Show 7 p.m.
Where: Tap Root Public House, 3300 Spenard Road, free
21 and over, minors okay if accompanied by the legal guardian