Kate Pierson likes long, peaceful walks on Corn Hill Beach. She also likes bright red hair, dramatic eye makeup, and vibrant, punchy dance music. The singer is a founding member of the B-52s, a band that took the world by storm in the late 1970s with its unapologetically weird new-wave music. The band is still going strong, but these days Pierson is equally focused on a solo musical career.
Pierson lives in Woodstock, N.Y. and Truro, where she bought a house four years ago with her wife, Monica Coleman, a ceramic artist and designer. Pierson released Guitars and Microphones, her first solo album, in 2015. Just last year, she came out with her second, Radios and Rainbows. On Friday, Aug. 29, Pierson will perform songs from both albums at Provincetown Town Hall as part of Payomet’s Road Show series. She’ll be accompanied by John Valesio on drums and two fellow members of the B-52s: Tracy Wormworth on bass and Ken Maiuri on keyboard and guitar.
Though she began releasing her own music only recently, Pierson has been writing songs since she was a teenager. She grew up in Weehawken and Rutherford, N.J. In high school, she played the piano and guitar and performed in a folk protest band called the Sun Donuts.
“I was writing songs all the time,” she says. But when she formed the B-52s in 1976 with Fred Schneider, Cindy Wilson, Ricky Wilson, and Keith Strickland, that solo composing changed to collaborative songwriting with the other band members. “We’d record our jams and then piece the good parts together like a collage,” she says. The band’s initial years of writing, recording, and touring, she says, left no time for her own songwriting.
“My muse didn’t come to me until the late ’90s,” she says, when she had the chance to collaborate with and tour Japan with singer Yuki of the Japanese rock band Judy and Mary. “I realized that if I could collaborate with someone in a different language,” says Pierson, “I could write and collaborate with anyone. It opened up a well of creativity for me.”
During that period, she wrote an album’s worth of songs, but they were never released — the B-52s’ manager at the time “squelched” the idea, Pierson says, in order to avoid distracting from the band. The B-52s have now been performing for 49 years — “We have a camaraderie that lasts,” Pierson says — which is why it took her so long to record and release her first album.
The last 10 years have been a period of self-discovery. “Who am I as a musician?” she asks. “I’m still exploring that.” Many of her songs are autobiographical but branch out into fiction. “You have to let surprises come to you,” Pierson says. “For me, that’s the way songs happen.”
She’s big on co-writing — for Guitars and Microphones, Pierson worked with different songwriters for almost every song, including Australian pop singer Sia, who Pierson became “fast friends” with after meeting her at a birthday party in New York City. “When I write with different people,” Pierson says, “each song has a different flavor.”
The album’s title track, written with Sia and Christopher Braide, opens with a fast-paced beat under a chime-like electronic melody. Then the full band comes in — bass, guitar, drums — adding warmth and depth. On the track, Pierson sings swiftly and casually; melody seems less important than the words themselves, which tell the story of Pierson’s high school band. “Banded together by guitars and microphones,” Pierson sings, “we wrote our protest songs.” This track’s flavor is teenage garage-band: edgy and cool yet entirely organic.
“Bottoms Up,” written with Sia and Nick Valensi, is grungier, with its buzzing bass, rollicking triple meter, and lyrics referencing drugs and addiction; “Crush Me With Your Love,” written with Sia, is a soaring, romantic ballad about Pierson’s relationship with Coleman — they met in Woodstock in 2002 and got married in 2015.
It took Pierson nine years to release another album because of the demanding schedule of the B-52s. “Time passes faster than you think,” she says. “It’s like getting on a luge.” But she managed it: released in 2024, Radios and Rainbows has 12 songs, also written collaboratively with a variety of musicians and songwriters.
This album’s first track, “Evil Love,” written with Bleu McCauley, is “not autobiographical at all,” Pierson says. “It’s a revenge song.” Over smooth and funky instrumentals, Pierson sings the tale of a vengeful lover. “It’s kind of cinematic,” she says.
In contrast, “The Beauty of It All,” the album’s fourth track, is extremely personal. It tells the story of how Pierson was able to heal from a past relationship through her new one with Coleman. “I found myself climbing so high,” Pierson sings. “I could see through the sky, and I fell. Like a star shining, you were there to help.”
The album’s title track, “Radios and Rainbows,” has political meaning, Pierson says, though when she began writing it, that wasn’t her intent. “It just flowed out,” she says. The song sounds like a mix of classic rock and funk; Pierson’s vocal melody goes against the grain of the instrumentals, leaping from low to high notes with agility. The lyrics reference bright and beautiful things like rainbows, open windows, and peace, as well as phrases relevant to the state of politics: “How do we tell the truth from the lies?” The song is uplifting — at one point, Pierson puts it plainly: “I think we’ll be all right.”
“I’m a natural optimist,” she says. All of her songs, no matter their subjects, have a compellingly danceable beat and a vivacity that carries the music. After almost 50 years with the B-52s, Pierson says her solo career is a source of energy.
“After I do a live show, I feel empowered,” she says. “Like I’ve taken a dip in the ocean.”
Singing It
The event: A performance by Kate Pierson
The time: Friday, Aug. 29, 7:30 p.m.
The place: Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial St.
The cost: $35 to $55 general admission at payomet.org
