Kristen Englenz is a performing singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and artist based in East Nashville. She paints musical stories of heartache and yearning with a soulful sensibility both intimately aching and defiant with hope. She is also the host of Caterwauling With Kristen. A quirky, informational show on birds and the sounds they make.

 

Roots music journal No Depression called Englenz’s music “stream of consciousness Beat poetry imbued with good-down-home Southern sensibility.” And Stomp and Stammer said, "There is a stirring intimacy to these performances that holds you in their grasp."

 

Englenz was one of those peculiar children determined to be very different in the sort of way that she was committed to being completely herself. Music seemed destined to be her first language. She was unable to read as a kid, and was placed in English to Speakers of Other Languages. As a last ditch effort, her parents called in a piano teacher per the findings of some new research. Almost miraculously, Kristen could read music instantly, and a week later, could read words.

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Bullied by other kids, she turned to music, her imagination, and nature. This sparked a realization that humans are not separate from, but a part of nature. In the most sincere form of flattery, Kristen started mimicking bird calls, which seemed a natural addition (pun intended) to the musical repertoire she was learning on piano and french horn. In addition to Mozart and Chopin, there was now the Sandhill Crane and Mockingbird.

 

In 2009, she even won an international bird call imitation contest hosted in Decatur, GA.

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