Kait Corrado is the Operations & Development Associate at Youth on Record. She holds a Bachelor of Music in Songwriting from Berklee College of Music and has written and recorded two albums under her family name, Kait Berreckman. Listen here.

My position at Youth on Record is often described as “behind the scenes.” From paying our bills and tracking our financials each month to managing our donor database with one hand and ordering pizza with the other, I am proud to support the work of our amazing teachers and students from my little office corner. What’s invigorating about doing this type of work for Youth on Record, work that some artists might find frustratingly cut & dry, is knowing our ability to provide quality programming for our students and professional opportunities for artists in our community depends on it. 

My husband and I moved to Denver Omaha, NE in late 2017 and I fell head-first into an artistic evolution that, at the time, felt like a massive crisis. In Omaha, I had a band, I had a LOT of gigs, I had the kind of creative ambition that blooms in a garden you’ve tended for years. But in Denver, so close and yet an entirely different world, my support system, my creative collaborators, my fans - they weren’t here. Their absence forced me to look more closely at what I was doing and why I was doing it. Gigs were harder to come by and my insecurity told me this scene didn’t have room for me. How many singer-songwriters can one city hold? Who am I if I’m not performing? What is the point of writing songs no one hears? 

When I started at YOR I realized I was writing “songs” for other people to “sing”: sending invoices they pay so that we can pay our artists, setting appointments they take so that we can find new opportunities for our work, understanding guidelines for others to follow so that their work might be properly funded. Doing this work has inspired me to consider the ways something like a song and the hours spent wringing out the melody or refurbishing the chord progression can provide a similarly dependable structure for an artist to thrive within.

A well-written song can be a tether for an aerialist vocal, a buoy for a heavy emotion, a safe place to reach for a new idea.

That perspective has allowed me to find joy and satisfaction in a new project (one that is not quite ready to announce as of this blog assignment due date). There’s a lot to learn still and the questions linger: Is it possible to embrace the space behind the scenes? Can I build scaffolding for others to climb? I think it might be more exciting to be the first up the ladder, to see the spire and point the way.

Looking forward to sharing more with you soon.