Season 1, Episode 4: Kate Cudbertson

Welcome to Episode 4 of The Cockatoo!

In today's installment, your host Adam Burke engages in a lively conversation with another phenomenal homegrown artist manager, the incomparable Kate Cudbertson. They delve into Kate's daring leap from her hometown of Adelaide to the bustling streets of New York City, where she embarked on her journey in the music industry. From managing FKJ's whirlwind career to navigating the vibrant music scenes on both coasts of the United States, Kate shares her remarkable experiences and insights. Tune in as she recounts the challenges, triumphs, and unexpected moments that have shaped her path from hospitality worker to managing the careers of internationally acclaimed musicians.

Interview Transcript

Interviewer: Welcome to The Cockatoo, your source for all things Australian music in the US of A. We're coming at you from Los Angeles, California, and this is the interview part of our newsletter where we talk about musical journeys to the United States. Today I'm very excited to be speaking to Kate Cudbertson. Kate manages a performer known as FKJ, short for French Kiwi Juice, known to his family and friends as Vincent Fenton. Kate's journey with Vincent has seen him headline the blue-ribbon venues around the world, as well as festivals including multiple Coachellas, Lollapalooza, and many more. Today we're going to find out how this lady from Adelaide got herself here. Welcome, Kate.

Kate Cudbertson: Hi, thanks for having me.

Interviewer: Great to see you. Let's just give a little orientation for our listeners as to who FKJ is. I know of him as, I would say, a multi-genre, multi-instrumental musical savant would be my best description. Accurate. Yes. Tell us just the elevator summary of who he is and the music that he performs.

Kate: Funnily enough, even having managed him for as long as I have, I still struggle to pigeonhole him into any particular sound or genre because, as you said, he's really, he crosses all of that and sort of, yes, defies any ordinary sound and how to do things. He's from France, so I think a lot of like French house was initially like a big inspiration for him. I feel like FKJ really introduced, looping sounds and instruments, multi-instruments live to the music world in a sort of newer way when the industry really started changing with SoundCloud and to streaming. I feel like he was sort of at the forefront of doing that live in his bedroom as sort of a bedroom producer. Now he does it on the world's biggest stages, still how he used to do it.

Interviewer: Right. He's French, but also a Kiwi from New Zealand as well.

Kate: Yes. His dad's New Zealand, his mom's French.

Interviewer: Right. He's released two full-length studio albums, 2017 French Kiwi Juice and 2022 Vincent, both sort of self-titled.

Kate: Yes.

Interviewer: Okay.

Kate: Self-titled, yes.

Interviewer: Basically. Lives in the Philippines.

Kate: He does.

Interviewer: Yes.

Kate: Right. Undisclosed area. He likes to keep that quite private, he lives out in the Philippines. It's beautiful.

Interviewer: Okay. We won't disclose any secrets. You've worked with him throughout the period of his two studio releases, yes?

Kate: Yes. I came on board as management when he released his first album. It was a bit of a crossover there, but we met at the end of 2016 and started working together from the beginning of 2017 and all through his second album release. In between that, obviously, that was a pretty big gap between 2017 and 2022 album releases. He released a lot of incredible bodies of work, like EPs, both from just instrumental piano to another EP called Ylang Ylang in that time as well.

Interviewer: Yes. Very busy, prolific artist. Excellent. Let's talk about you. You grew up in, right?

Kate: I did. I did. Good old Adelaide.

Interviewer: Good old Adelaide. You're currently based in Los Angeles?

Kate: I am.

Interviewer:  When did you make the move from Australia to the United States?

Kate: I initially started coming out here, and by here, I just mean the US. I was based in New York at the time at the beginning of 2016. I did a little stint, and then I came back again just on my ESTA for three months to see how I liked it. Then I moved at the end of that year more permanently. Yes, I was in New York for two and a half years. Then at the end of 2018, I moved to LA. That was always very-- I've been touring a lot in all of those years, actually. It's nice to sort of be a little bit more grounded now.

Interviewer:  Tell us about that period, that period when you sort of had one foot in Adelaide and one foot in the United States. How did you manage that personally?

Kate: With a lot of difficulty, to be honest. It was exciting because I was in my early sort of mid-20s, and I was still working full-time hospitality work in Australia and Adelaide whenever I could to earn money to float what I was doing overseas. At the time, I was managing four Australian bands as well, again, completely independently. I was trying to do that. I came over to the US in order to get them to that sort of next level as well, as well as myself, because I knew that there was more to the world than just the Australian music industry, and I was really curious about what that was.

Interviewer: How did you end up getting into music management in the first place, in Adelaide?

Kate: In Adelaide specifically, I had lived in London for two and a bit years when I was 18, and that's when I first got into the music world, or when I first learned that the music industry existed and learned that management was a thing. Then when I moved back to Australia, I started interning at this company called Five Four Entertainment. I'm not sure if that's still their name, but I'm quite sure they're still operating more as an events company now, but I did a management internship with them because they managed Tkay Maidza at the time, and another artist called Jesse Davidson, and a few other great acts. I did a six-month internship there.

Interviewer:  Then, so you do your six-month internship, and then you decide it's time to start very young at this point, I might say, becoming a manager yourself, rather than sort of nestling into a pre-existing organization. You elect to go for it, right?

Kate: I would like to say that was my train of thought, but it was more so because I really struggled to get a job. I would have loved to just nestle in and get a job back then. That's what I wanted. That was the dream. I had dropped out of high school at quite a young age. I feel like, this was 10 years ago or so, and I feel like it's changed a lot since then. I feel like, the importance of academia was still a little bit stronger than maybe it is now with the internet and how much it's changed in the last 10 years. Yes, I really struggled to get a job. I just sort of said, well, fuck it, I guess I'll just go straight to the artist and see what happens.

Interviewer: Yes. Create a job for yourself.

Kate: Yes.

Interviewer: Yes. Okay. You're in your 20s, you're living in Adelaide, you're managing four bands, and you come to the realization that you need to expand their horizons and possibly your own and the US is an obvious starting point and also a major reason why we have these conversations. I think that's the point of what we're doing here. How does that look, those initial trips? Where are you going? What are you doing? What's happening?

Kate: Good question. Honestly, thinking back on it now, I'm like, "Who was that person?" I just used any contacts I had. At the time from the bands I was managing in Adelaide, a couple of people had reached out about one of those acts. I was managing an electronic duo called Pine. We're still going strong. I think they're actually playing in LA, potentially at The Echo. Let me double-check that in February. It's great to see them still doing their thing.

Interviewer: Absolutely.

Kate: Yes, there was a couple of managers that reached out to me called John and James. Funnily enough, they're still some of my absolutely closest, nearest and dearest friends. They introduced me to a whole lot of people. They really believed in me. They helped me with my visa letters. A lot of my initial trips were meeting with them, speaking with them. Also, that's sort of why I fell in love with America. Everyone's really encouraging. I was a starry-eyed, very inexperienced manager from Australia. I said, "I've come out here," and I'd go to meetings or parties and say, "I'm an artist manager," and people were really excited and encouraging. That's something I never found. Maybe I just wasn't in the right circles, but I struggled to find that same emotion around it in Australia.

Interviewer:  What are the significant doors and opportunities that they opened up for you that made the United States seem like a viable option for you?

Kate: Honestly, as simple as encouragement. It didn't take much. It just took people saying, "You can do it. Let's go. Come over. Let's try." Initially, we had ideas of starting our own management company, which we didn't end up doing just, they still had full-time jobs. John was at Universal at the time and James was over at Red Light at the time. Then everything sort of got rolling with FKJ for me, which honestly took up the best part of seven years of my attention.

Interviewer: Okay, so in that period, that early period where you haven't moved to the United States, you're not a resident yet, but you spent a lot of time here, you're checking it out, John and James are helping you out, more of a New York focus. How did you manage that? You're working in hospitality in Adelaide, saving money, I guess, give us an understanding of how that was even possible.

Kate: I had saved up just from working hospitality and to be honest, it wasn't. I had 500 Australian dollars in my bank account when I moved to New York. I had my first month's rent paid and if I didn't get a job within that first four weeks, I had to leave. It was as simple as that. That's when I somewhat harassed FKJ until they offered me tour manager and then within two months of tour management, I took over for management as well.

Interviewer: Okay, so that is a wild three months. You arrive in New York with $500, a couple of good mates, but nothing else. You got one month of what they would call runway in the startup world and three months later, you're managing FKJ.

Kate: Yes. Exactly. It's funny when you put it like that, and then for a long time, I honestly lived off of, because when you're managing an artist, you want to put everything you've got into their show and take as little as you can and do whatever it takes to help them make money and help these shows function. I was just living off on the road. I wasn't paying rent anywhere for quite a while. I was eating off of the rider or per diems for income or for food. It wasn't glamorous, let's just say that.

Interviewer: Right, yes, no, the road's only glamorous when you're not actually on it.

Kate: Yes, exactly.

Interviewer: Okay, so just peg that in time. When is that three-month period taking place?

Kate: That brings us to June 2017-ish.

Interviewer: So, you slam-bang in the middle of the summer season here, tours are happening everywhere and you're basically living on the road and surviving on per diems.

Kate: Yes, we started the tour in March. By the time everything had changed, and it was really in full swing, it was the middle of 2017, yes.

At what point did you decide I need to move to the US and go through all this? Do you remember when that moment happened?

Kate: Yes, it was the summer of 2016. I was living in Brooklyn. It was just a feeling really. It was just an intuitive feeling that I knew I needed to be where the action was, I guess. I could tell how much it brought the best out in me. It brought out confidence. I'm never without self-doubt, unfortunately, but it brought out a little bit more self-belief. It brought out inspiration and it brought out a community and network of people that I didn't have in Australia in the music world.

Host: Tell us a little bit more about that feeling, that motivation, because that's a huge thing to do. You're taking a massive risk in your life. You don't really have the money to do it. You don't have any security of employment or anything else. That's all connected. That must be a very strong feeling that you've had to want to make that step to the other side of the world.

Kate: I think that's exactly it. I didn't have anything to lose. What was the worst that was going to happen? I moved back to Adelaide and keep doing my hospitality job. Nothing would have changed, except I would have tried and maybe come back with a bit of debt. I think it was like a bit of naivety goes a really long way in a really positive way. Sometimes I wish I could throw away some of my knowledge now to get back that real hungry blindness of passion or ambition for just making something work. You don't even know what that something is yet. Again, yes, I had nothing to lose. I think that's sort of where just that throw everything at the wall, see if it sticks sort of mentality came from.

Interviewer:  by middle of 2016, you're managing FKJ and he's a busy guy with lots of happening, always. Tell us about the next couple of years or how it looks for you from there on in your journey out here to the United States.

Kate: Yes, it was a lot of just heavy, heavy touring. I really learned how to build a show, how to build a team in the live world that's come in really handy over the years and to sort of where we are now. With a very well-oiled machine in his live aspect of his career. I had to learn how to be a manager outside of the live world as well, sort of learning everything that comes with it, which is what I really love about management is you get to explore every aspect of the industry instead of sort of being stuck in one particular place. I just sort of put my head down and did exactly that, learned how the rest of the industry works and how it all works as a cohesive machine.

Interviewer:  At some point you decide to move from coast to coast here in the US, you go from New York to LA.  What was behind that move?

Kate: I didn't realize how much I need to see a horizon and nature. It was much more of a mental health move for me. The weather, I thought I was this big city gal, but it turns out I am not, and I need some space both mentally and physically, I need space. LA just seemed, I didn't know any, I knew two people here and did the move, but I just, I knew it needed to happen. I was feeling quite suffocated in New York just by default of what that city is like. It's incredible and I'm glad I did it in my 20s, but two and a half years was long enough for me.

 if you were to go back to the hospitality worker in Adelaide in 2015 or '16, that time period when you were just really starting this musical journey to the United States, is there anything that you would tell yourself that you didn't know then?

Kate: I think to enjoy it, to enjoy working with not so much pressure, working with your hands, working with your body, working with teams, and maybe be a little bit more astute as to just how many skills you're learning in something that is maybe sometimes seen as a bit of a throwaway career, but it built me as a person. A lot of skills that I learned in the hospitality world, I've brought over to the music world. For anyone that is currently stuck in some hospitality job that they don't think is getting them anywhere, I really think there is a lot of skills to value.

Interviewer: Yes, absolutely. Especially in management where you've got to pretty much be across everything, don't you?

Kate: Exactly. Exactly. How to speak to people, how to be able to read people, customers, staff, budgets, cashing up at the end of the night. There's a lot of crossover.

Interviewer: Absolutely. It's an incredible story and it's far from told. I think we've got you quite early in your path in this, wherever it leads. Thank you so much for sharing it so far and always a pleasure to talk to you and all the best in the future.

Kate: Yes, thank you so much for having me.

Host:  That was Kate Cudbertson. We're talking to her here in Los Angeles for The Cockatoo's newsletter where we explore musical journeys from Australia to the United States. The Cockatoo is the Australian Music Alliance which is part of the Pitchhiker Foundation. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit so you can always support what we do by donating or following or subscribing to our newsletter. Thank you very much for listening and we'll catch you on the next edition.