Daily Discovery: Heartbreak Inspires Kate Dinsmore’s “Giving You Up”

Pacific Northwest singer-songwriter Kate Dinsmore has a voice like a howling breeze through a country barn. Slats rattle, an owl shudders. Hay rustles and the air pushes through to the coast. Dinsmore’s music is a journey in melody.

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After a breakup with a bass player in the midwest, Dinsmore rode home to Washington State to form a new relationship with music. She’d seen a bit of how the whole thing worked with her now-ex and so, home again, she decided to give it a go, solo. And she was carried by her delightful pipes.

When asked how Dinsmore would describe the music she makes, she is clear, concise, and to the darn point: “Heartbreak you can sway to.” And her newest track certainly lives up to that feel.

Yet, in another way, the song began with something much simpler: a hang-over.

“I do most of my writing first thing in the morning,” she says. “On this particular morning, I was wickedly hungover and made the decision to reread a bunch of my old journal entries. This puts a person in a terrible mood. I realized I had been trying to ‘give up’ the same three things for almost a decade. It was to try and drink less, try and forget about your ex, and ‘be healthier,’ whatever that means. After I read those pages the song just spilled out. I love it when that happens.”

And as Dinsmore’s journey continues to push ahead and pick up speed, the Emerald City-based artist says she hopes she gives someone else a sense of connectedness and a deep exhalation.

“With my songwriting,” Dinsmore says, “all I can hope for is that someone finds comfort in knowing that they are not alone in what they are going through. We all struggle, and that’s okay. Life keeps moving, and we just do our best to keep up with it.”

(Photo courtesy Kate Dinsmore)

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