Power In Simplicity: Cherokee singer/songwriter Ken Pomeroy is doing it for the music
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STERLIN HARJO
It’s one of those voices that takes your breath away.
Visit Ken Pomeroy’s social media as she tours the U.S. this summer with John Moreland and Iron & Wine, and you’ll see new fans chiming in with awestruck tributes to her resonant Americana sound. But even though she’s only 21, Pomeroy’s not new to moving folks to tears. The Cherokee singer/songwriter started making music when she was 9. And Oklahoma audiences have known for years that something special is happening whenever she takes the stage.
“It’s sort of undeniable when you hear her,” says Sterlin Harjo, who featured her song “Cicadas” in Season 3 of “Reservation Dogs.” “I just have a feeling that Ken’s got a big future ahead of her in music. She’s unique, and she’s also for real. You can tell she’s doing it for the music. And whenever you’re doing it like that, there’s nothing that stops you.
Now, with a new album in the works and listeners nationwide beginning to take notice, Pomeroy is navigating a bigger landscape, both in her career and in her songwriting—while still drawing from inspiration close to home.
“I had such a lucky, music-filled upbringing,” she says. Her father, who was in a band himself, regularly brought her to hear music at his Moore venue The Shop at Skippy’s, immersing her in the sounds of Carter Sampson, John Calvin Abney and Kyle Reid in her pre-teen years. But her musical ear started getting tuned even earlier than that.
“I got introduced to John Denver when I was 6,” Pomeroy remembers. “I was so infatuated by how he would sing and paint pictures with his words. ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ was the song I was obsessed with as a kid. My mom Wendy actually burned a CD with that song on it 18 times—the only song on the CD, playing over and over. I would listen to it to go to sleep for years. I like to say John Denver is the reason I play music. It sparked something in me very young.”
From those beginnings, Pomeroy quickly found a voice of her own—one that draws comparisons to Gillian Welch and Phoebe Bridgers, but really sounds like her and her alone. As a teenager, she performed at events like the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival and Folk Alliance International, received the Rising Star award from the Songwriters Association of Norman, won the first-ever Jimmy LaFave songwriting contest and released an EP and then a full album, 2018’sHallways, on Horton Records.
That vigorous start has mellowed into a deeper kind of energy. With 2021’s Christmas Lights in April, Pomeroy’s songs—always thoughtful, heartfelt, melodically unexpected and preternaturally mature—expanded into an ease and breadth that made space for her powerful voice to range like a river. “I was naive to simplicity in the beginning,” she says of her early songwriting. “As I have continued writing, my main goal is to get my point across in the fewest words.” Like a watercolor sketch, the lyrical gestures in songs like “Joan” and “Flannel Cowboy” speak volumes with a single sweep. Her mesmerizing finger-picked guitar and her voice—which can go from under-her-breath to mountain-shaking in a split second—do the rest.
From Samantha Crain to Medicine Horse, Oklahoma’s Indigenous musicians have gained much-deserved national attention in recent years. Pomeroy joined a number of them on Anvdvnelisgi (ᎠᏅᏛᏁᎵᏍᎩ)—a 2022 compilation of contemporary songs sung in Cherokee, which marked the first time she had sung in that language—as well as on the “Reservation Dogs” soundtrack. “So many amazing opportunities came from having my songs on the show,” she says, including connecting with Hrishikesh Hirway (creator of the Song Exploder podcast) and landing a new manager.
“I was naive to simplicity in the beginning. As I have continued writing, my main goal is to get my point across in the fewest words.”
And of course, going out on tour: her busy summer takes her from Minnesota to Carnegie Hall to Washington, D.C., where as a teen she once played a nine-minute tribute to Woody Guthrie at a National History Day celebration. “Touring is all of the highest highs and the lowest lows mixed into one,” she says. “I get to tour with my partner, Dakota McDaniel, who also co-produced the record we have been recording this year. Anytime times get tough while touring, we always ‘perspectivize’ and think about how getting paid to play music and see the country is pretty rad.”
The roads that will take Pomeroy home (to paraphrase John Denver) now bring her to Tulsa, where she and McDaniel relocated last year from the Oklahoma City area. “Tulsa has so much music history and a huge folk/Americana scene, which is perfect for us,” she says. And while it’s not easy being a young woman in the music industry, she’s finding her way with the same assurance she shows in her songs.
“It’s sometimes very rough. I take the high road and keep truckin’. My payback is when they ask if my partner is ‘Ken’ and I get to say, ‘Nope, that’s me’—and give them a really firm handshake.” •