WYCE’s Jammies, now approaching their 26th year, are right around the corner. This celebration of some of the best music in Michigan serves not only as a spotlight for established and emerging recording artists, it’s also a primary fundraiser for WYCE.
Under the umbrella of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center, WYCE is one of the few independent stations in the region—and it runs on listener support and volunteer spirit. If you’ve never attended a Jammies award ceremony, but are motivated to keep small, community-driven broadcasting alive, be sure to snag your ticket for the event, held February 20, 2026 at The Intersection.
If you’ve also always wanted permission to wear your pajamas in public, this is your opportunity to do just that without showing up on some shame reel. Yes, PJs are encouraged. But don’t let the hooded onesies, bunny slippers, and fuzzy robes give you too much of a casual vibe. These awards are serious, and receiving recognition in them is a big deal to the musicians who are nominated.
I was excited to see some folks I’ve been following for years, the Kate Hinote Trio, show up in two People’s Choice categories: Album of the Year (“Stowaways”) and Artist of the Year. It was also just announced that they have been officially nominated for “Best Contemporary Folk Album”! Though they’re based in the Detroit area, Kate Hinote Trio has received plenty of attention in Grand Rapids and beyond, including catching the ear of WYCE’s and Local Spins’ John Sinkevics.
Kate Hinote Trio, featuring Kate on vocals, David Johnson on acoustic guitar, and Matthew Parmenter on violin, spent much of 2025 touring all over Michigan, as well as Ohio, New Jersey, and Kentucky—all while holding down day jobs and dabbling in side projects.
I recently caught up with Kate, who was eager to talk about the Trio (and also The Blueflowers, another Hinote endeavor), both of which happen to include an old friend and classmate of mine I’ve known since elementary school. Hi, Dave!
How did you find out you received Jammie nominations, and what was your response?
It is a very modern social media story, how I learned about our Jammies nomination. I was coming home from a date night with my husband, Tony Hamera (he engineered, mixed and mastered “Stowaways”), and I opened FB out of habit. Expecting nothing terribly exciting, I instead discovered I was tagged by some lovely and supportive friends of mine in a congratulatory comment on the post that WYCE made about the official 2026 Jammies nominees.
Surprised and excited to see us listed, I immediately shared a screen shot of our category with my bandmates, Matthew Parmenter and David Johnson… and my Mom. It was unexpected, for sure. The year-end lists had come and gone, and we were grateful to be included on a few of them, but I hadn’t much considered we might still be included in award season until WYCE had posted about the People’s Choice voting for Artist and Album of the Year.
I have been quite fortunate to have the support of John Sinkevics and Local Spins over the years, and that has definitely helped us expand our tour radius outside the Detroit area into the west side of the state. I was elated to read the news, no doubt. We all know how much time, work, and energy it takes to release an album of original compositions and try to get it into as many ears as possible, so in that sense, it felt a bit validating.
You toured quite a bit in 2025, including in GR and West Michigan. What are your plans for the coming year?
The tour schedule for the Kate Hinote Trio is certainly filling in, which is always fun this time of year. We are working on our return to Grand Rapids, as well as Kalamazoo, but haven’t locked in those details yet. I did, however, book something I’m so stoked about… a Spring Library Tour with three dates on the West Coast of The Mitten, and ending at the Detroit Public Library on May 1st. I have given particular attention to libraries this year. The inherently quiet nature of libraries makes them wonderful listening rooms, which there just doesn’t seem to be enough of for us.
In addition to returning to the U.P. in July and the Northeast coast of our beautiful state in June (including our first appearance at Nor East’r Music & Art Festival!) and venturing back to Upstate New York… we’ll also be doing a handful of collaborative shows with our friend Emily Rose. Those shows will include some of the material Emily and I have collaborated on at her Ghost Nights over the last couple of years, as well as joining each other’s sets.
The Trio definitely dominated my energy and focus in 2025 and we have no plans to slow down, but with the album release part behind us, I will finally have time to focus on writing new material for The Blueflowers. That’s always challenging fun. The Blueflowers were born in 2009 and we have five full length albums and two EPS of material to choose from when performing, but new material is exciting and reinvigorating for everyone, so I’m also working on getting more than a handful of dates for The Blueflowers this year and hoping to have some of those on the road. It’s much harder to take a six piece band out than a trio, but I’m up for the challenge.
Photo: The Blueflowers, courtesy of Lisa Folcarelli Jansen.
If you had to name one song you’ve written that you feel showcases your sound, what would it be?
This is tough. In both the Trio and The Blueflowers, there is some genre fluidity throughout, though they generally fall under the very large Americana umbrella. If you asked me for the song on The Trio’s latest album that I’m most proud of, it would be a song that Matthew and I wrote together called “Cemetery Road.” The song that most showcases our sound, that’s more challenging because they are kind of all over the place. At the end of the day, Matthew Parmenter’s writing has been most influential on the overall sound, so I would say “The Last Day I Went Crazy” is a good first listen to see if you are picking up what we’re laying down.
Between all your endeavors, you’ve been writing and performing for more than 20 years. Is it a dream to leave those previously noted day jobs and make music your full-time gig?
I won’t say that I’ve never considered that making music for a living might be less stressful than the daily grind of working for lawyers, but I suspect the stress of having to have enough success (however that is measured, but namely monetarily) as a musician to support myself and my family is a whole other thing. I am a very organized worker bee by nature, which makes me great at my day job and good at the hustle it requires to book and wrangle the bands that I’m fronting.
Performing and making music is a much-needed stress reliever for me. The physical act of singing soothes me. While I’d love to have more people hear me sing and hear our music and embrace what any of my bands are doing, I am fortunate that I don’t need to make a living from music because 1) I don’t believe that I could these days, given my circumstances, no matter how hard I tried, and 2) I have a day job that is fulfilling (even if it’s high stress) and a boss that is very supportive of my music life and allows me to take the time I need to pursue it at a level that I’m not sure everyone else would be afforded. With that said, there are so many folks working tirelessly to lift up our regional music scene to support musicians more and create better opportunities for them. I have been very lucky to work with them and have their support.
The short version is that I really admire folks that take the plunge and do this full time and that does sound like an absolute dream in some ways. However, I don’t know that I’d ever want to have the relationship with music and performing that would have me counting on gigging to pay my bills, so I wouldn’t say I ever really dream of not having to keep a day job. I need my day job in order to even be able to pursue music the way that I do.
Do you prefer performing in Kate Hinote Trio over The Blueflowers?
I wouldn’t say that I prefer it, no. They are very different experiences, and both have their highlights for me. I should start by saying that none of the folks in either band are hired guns. These are friends, among my closest in a tiny circle, that are dedicating their time and energy to what we’re doing, with a collaborative spirit. I still am working hard to get us all paid for that time and energy, of course, but it does take some of the pressure off that these are people who know what I’m up against and understand not every gig is a payday.
There is something quite lovely about the intimacy of performing with the trio, in that you can hear the nuance in the arrangements, as well as the lyrics, and the simplicity of the instrumentation allows for more dynamics and more engaging storytelling. There are also far more performance opportunities for an acoustic trio as most of the rooms that the Trio performs in could not tolerate a six-piece alt-rock band. That has allowed me to travel quite a bit with the Trio and, I won’t lie, we have an absolute blast on the road, even when it gets chaotic. No matter what it has taken for us to get to any particular performance, we are always having fun with each other on stage and not just for the show for our audience, for ourselves as well.
The energy of performing with The Blueflowers is something else entirely. There is a darkness and nostalgia to The Blueflowers that will be my forever favorite, along with an intensity and power that are an escape into a kind of different character for me. Getting caught up in that with my husband on electric guitar on one side, my ride or die, David Johnson, on acoustic guitar, and my sister-in-doom, keyboardist/vocalist Erin Williams Browne, on the other, and then Jim Faulkner (drums) and Bryan Talaski (bass) driving the energy and momentum behind me? It just can’t be beat. It’s a comfortable team effort now, but still exciting and so fun… every time.
What is your favorite question to be asked when interviewed? Or, what do you wish more people would ask you?
Hmm… I haven’t considered this much, I suppose. You’ve asked some different questions here, which I certainly appreciate. In the time battle that is my existence, I just answer what’s asked and move on.
I have enjoyed the folks that get into questions about the nitty gritty of my songwriting, but I guess I sometimes wish I was given more of an opportunity to talk about the hustle it is to book shows and promote them. That isn’t always super positive, however, so I suppose these days, people might shy away from that. The numerous micro rejections (or straight-up rejection) I endure is probably ten-fold for every gig you see listed on our tour schedule. I don’t know if that would surprise people or not. The closest comparison I’ve ever been able to come up with would be actors or dancers who must audition, and the number of auditions they have to go on before landing the next gig.
This isn’t a complaint, however, because I’ve been doing this a long time now, and it still makes the wins so much more satisfying/exciting, and intensifies the gratitude I feel toward every person who takes a chance on an out-of-town band, or gets excited to host us and shows it through their professionalism and/or promotion because they want people to hear us. While I do understand that many times and for many people, it’s just business, it’s all a collaboration in the end, and I’ve been very fortunate to find my way to several folks and venues that see it that way, including my bandmates.
I do know my circumstances are unique and that I’m lucky in many ways that I even get to do this. Being nominated for a Jammie? That is absolutely icing on the cake… and I’ll take it!
Interested in seeing Kate Hinote Trio perform? They’ll be in the greater West Michigan area in April 2026 as part of their library tour. See their whole schedule here. You can also follow along on Facebook and Instagram.
To see the full Jammies lineup and buy tickets, go here.
