A Wild Ride for San Angelo's Kat Hasty

The breakup created a very rebellious version of Taylor Swift. She doesn’t hold back. The song that took off on Spotify during the pandemic was “Pretty Things,” a break-up song all about how she’s not going to be “your southern Texas wannabe beauty queen.”

“No one was releasing new music during 2020,” Hasty said. Usually, musicians and bands release a new record to use to promote their current tour, but no one was touring. Live music venues were ordered closed and there was no reason for artists who already had a name to release new music.

“But I saw that everyone was on the Internet,” Hasty said. With that, Hasty seized the opportunity. She pushed out the first of what was to become three EP releases, all titled Drowning in Dreams, with “Pretty Things” rising to the top of it all.

“It went viral,” Hasty said. About 7.2 million Spotify spins later, Hasty, who said she had worked every $7.50-per-hour job, from waitressing to being an Uber driver, could support herself and daughter on her Spotify commissions alone.

Emboldened by the success, Hasty went back to her bathroom with her acoustic guitar and finished Part 3 of the Drowning in Dreams EPs, instructing her ex that, “Sometimes, love isn’t what our parents taught us.” She really loved him and was always faithful, she sings, but he’d settle for anyone who’d “run around on him.”

“But you’re a good old man, and i pray one day that you get all the love that you should have had,” she sings.

With autobiographical songs about a breakup with one guy — enough to fill not one but three EP releases — Hasty is well aware of people whispering “Taylor Swift” when describing her music.

“Yeah, my ex pretty much agrees that I ‘Taylor Swifted’ him,” Hasty said with a laugh. She said the two are cordial and that it’s too early to reveal who the former sweetheart is. Believing her music fits exactly into the Taylor Swift mold short-changes Hasty’s music, however. She’s more angry and rebellious, and very raw. She admits it’s her that won’t change; “Some things need to stay broken,” she sings in “Pretty Things.” Then there is the anthem every bad girl wants to live but can’t. So they live vicariously through Hasty’s “The Highway Song.” She’s the female version of Koe Wetzel in what may be her next Spotify hit. “Highway” is inching up on “Pretty Things” with 2.4 million spins. In it, she sings presumably autobiographically:

“On a highway with no name, We’re all high on mary jane.
And I bummed one cigarette, so now I’m smoking like a train.
I’ve got a man from Oklahoma, and I told him that I loved him.
But I was born for leaving and I’ll be gone in the morning.”

The lyrics then take you back to that ex who she just can’t shake. “Just when I think that I’m over it, it comes to me as a cocaine habit,” she sings.

There’s contrition in Drowning in Dreams, too. Every young woman has a mother who’s worried and prays she “loves Jesus” and needs to be saved. “But I’ve never been much for doing what I’m told,” she admits in “Dear Mama.”

Hasty’s music is a deep retrospective about herself and why she is who she is. It’s full of youthful ambition that she can break the rules and succeed where almost all who are older have failed. She admits in “Dear Mama” that, “I fell in love with the bright lights at only 17. I was born to be a dreamer… I’m sorry I’m not who you wanted me to be. But mama, I’m gonna make you proud of me.”

The attraction to her music is her independence as a woman who admits she is party girl whose parties are fun. It’s the girls who conformed— the kind of women Hasty refused to be — who can live Hasty’s life in the fast lane vicariously through her songs. At the same time, she trashes her ex. Who doesn’t appreciate the drama and pain of a breakup? In all, she explains — especially to her parents — why she did all the bad things described.

Texas music veteran Dalton Domino discovered Hasty’s music much like everyone else did — online during the lockdowns. He invited her into his circle of songwriters and concert promoters. Hasty said she has been working on her first real album with a full band. All of her recordings thus far are her bathroom acoustic sessions. She said there will be a full band single released within a month, just in time for the ramp-up of concerts across the country. She is represented by Nashville’s William Morris Entertainment, the same company that books many of the top Texas music performers and they all need opening acts.

What is more, Domino also brought Hasty into the high-performing northern route of the Texas Country Music scene. Acts like Pat Green, Wade Bowen, William Clark Green and Flatland Cavalry became quite popular on the Lubbock - San Angelo - Stephenville - Fort Worth circuit. Will Hasty?

You can decide for yourself if you catch Hasty Friday night at the Wild West Fest at the Bill Aylor Sr Memorial Riverstage, located near the intersection of S. Oakes St. and the Concho River in San Angelo. But arrive early. Hasty goes on stage at 6:30 p.m. The concert is headlined by Parker McCollum. Shane Smith and the Saints plays between Hasty and McCollum. Tickets are $38 each until 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, July 29, and $48 the day of the show, Friday, July 30. Over 4,000 tickets have been sold as of Thursday afternoon. Tickets are available online at Stubwire.

“This is pretty crazy stuff,” Hasty said about opening for Parker McCollum. “It all happened so quickly. I could never have imagined I’d be playing on the Riverstage in my own hometown,” Hasty said.

Update: At the July 30, 2021 Wild West Fest, Kat Hasty tells us more in this Video Showcase Story.