A rising star on the music scene who got her start on stage in Newport is returning to town this weekend for a show Sunday night at One Pelham East. Katrina Fortier leads her band Lady and the Lovers to the area for her first visit back since relocating in 2021.
“I went to Salve from 2009-2013, formed some bands, gigged a bunch,” said Fortier, who played in local bands including The Soul Keepers and Squelch. During the pandemic, she relocated to Ashville, NC, a town known for its lively music scene. “Asheville is what I like to call ‘the tunnel’ because it connects so many musical cities, and only a rare few there are actually from Asheville—the music seems to draw everyone here,” she said in a phone call earlier this week.
Once settled in Ashville, Fortier wasn’t sure if she would continue to perform live music. But one night, at a popular venue called The One Stop, that changed.
“I was singing at the ‘funk jam’ down there; it’s a Tuesday night jam with all the best musicians in town when they don’t have gigs,” she said. “I sang a little that night, and I was offered a job in a wedding band.” After networking with local musicians, Fortier formed her own band, Lady and the Lovers. Three years later, the band is making its first swing through New England.
Her pop-friendly sound is difficult to categorize, a fact for which she makes no apologies. “You can expect to hear songs you’re familiar with, but in a way that you don’t know,” explained Fortier. “We can take a pop song and make it into a funk song, or take a rock song and make it our own, taking some of those modern influences and infusing some new jazz or new funk into these tunes, making them fresh.”
Look for familiar songs and deep cuts in concert. “The setlist isn’t necessarily the Top 40 song that you’d expect to find; it’s that hidden gem on the album, the one that you love singing to in the car,” she said. “This is a passion project for me, so if I’m going to go out to perform in front of an audience, I want to be enjoying myself. I’m at a stage in my career where I feel like I can do that. I think that energy comes across on stage.”
She’s put together a solid backing band, “Those guys are so much fun, they’re just noodling around. I perform with these guys in many different capacities. That unity, where you can kind of freefall… you know what they’re going to do, even if you’re not quite sure where they’re going. When someone takes a risk, everyone supports.”
Fortier hopes to release an EP of original music soon. “It’s hard to put a genre on it, because it’s not necessarily fitting into one box, it falls in line with the music I sing when I perform.”
Check out the video below for more – and click here for details on Sunday’s show.
