Former Alaska singer aims at Walt Whitman

Juneau-born and Anchorage-raised singer/songwriter Kate Bass is in the process of producing a new album. She describes "Songs of the Open Road" as "a multi-genre indie-acoustic-jazz-folk-inspired album based on a Walt Whitman poem and written over the course of a year-long road trip across America." To support the project she has a Kickstarter campaign, seeking to raise $10,000 from fans, friends, music and Whitman lovers before Thursday, Nov. 10.

Bass is a graduate of East High School and winner of numerous music awards in her home state, where she's performed classical, jazz and pop music in venues ranging from Atwood Concert Hall to Maxine's in Girdwood. She's since had a career in opera and musical theater, with solo gigs with the New York Philharmonic, as Josephine in a national touring production of "H.M.S. Pinafore" and in the Lincoln Center production of "Carousel" televised on PBS. She's also kept up her all-rounder chops by singing at New York cabarets and Carnegie Hall. She released the first album of her own songs, "Maya," in 2012. And she's made several return trips to sing for the home folks.

Last year she left New York for Los Angeles, driving a red Volkswagen across the country, a trip that in some ways inspired the Walt Whitman songs that she began composing while still on the open road.

"This is the first full album I composed alone," she said. "I need to pay for the recording studio, the sound engineer, the mixing, the mastering, the production, the rehearsals, the manufacturing, and more … and I can't do it alone."

Assuming she gets the backing, Bass expects to have the album done next spring.