Scout Gillett

USA
Saturday, March 23 — Reset

Home’ is a tough thing to pinpoint for someone who’s constantly in motion. Scout Gillett knows this well, but since relocating from Kansas City in 2017, she’s found one in Brooklyn’s DIY scene, playing in multiple live bands and even starting her own booking company to organise shows for other independent artists. Her intrepid nature results from a childhood spent running barefoot through rural Missouri and coming of age in Kansas City’s punk scene. Her debut solo album no roof no floor features shades of all her past and present lives: a bold and spirited yet warm, intimate meditation on trust, surrender, and what makes a home.

Following the sudden overdose of a lover in 2018 and the onset of the 2020 quarantine, Scout returned to Missouri in search of reprieve. Instead, she was dismayed to find that her hometown was suffering; friends and family members were caught in the grips of drug and alcohol addiction. “Nothing was as I’d remembered,” she says. “I felt homesick for a home that no longer seemed to exist.” Overcome by grief and helplessness, she retreated inward, channelling her fears and frustrations, as she always had, into songwriting. “I meditated on surrender,” she says.