Listening In preview: Katy Hutson

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: a preview of this week’s Listening In.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Singer-songwriter Katy Hutson has 20 years in the music industry. She’s done solo albums. She’s also released several albums for children, including a jazz compilation called Coal Train Railroad.

REICHARD: But her career took an unexpected detour last year when doctors diagnosed her with an aggressive cancer.

Warren Smith talked to Hutson about her music, her creative process, and the lessons she’s learned.

In this excerpt from their conversation, she recalls the day she got her diagnosis.

KATY HUTSON: I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to begin treatment immediately. This was 100 percent fatal, so they were not kidding around. I was glad to have a very feisty, amazing doctor who got me into treatment fast.

SMITH: Yeah. Well, let me pause there if I might just a little bit because what you said is obviously a life-altering event in many, many ways. But here you are one day, you know, your husband has got this great musical career going. You have found a niche that is really cool. This Rain for Roots and Coal Train Railroad.

HUTSON: Oh yeah, it’s like the thing I want to do for 20 years. Yeah.

SMITH: Exactly. I mean, life is good. You’ve just come away from a week long poetry workshop where you got some really good creative work done. And then this. What was going on in your mind, what was your conversation with your husband, Kenny, and with God like during that era?

HUTSON: Everything was moving super fast. With Kenny, a lot of it was logistics. I mean the immediate, how do we keep me alive and also the most crucial things rise to the top. I love you. I want to be alive. I want to be alive with you. And my conversations with God were, you’ve said you are who you are. I believe you are who you are. Show me you are who you are. I was so thankful to have decades of grounding in hymns and deep, good truth. And they are the same truths now that they were before. I was thinking about this right before I got here. When I got to radiation, the last step, my skin literally came off. And I feel like in a sense this year, my skin literally came off. But the same stuff is underneath. It’s the same stuff. It’s just, yeah, God is good. This is … life is hard, and He is, He is true. And He will take care of me, live or die. So it gets down to real brass tacks conversations. That’s why I started writing.

(Photo/Katy Hutson, LinkedIn)

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