Kathryn Ann "Katie" Reider (May 23, 1978 – July 14, 2008) was an American singer-songwriter from Cincinnati, Ohio. Reider described her own music as "Folk/pop/rock fused together into some sort of 'genre-less' category." Reider released four albums, won five Cincinnati music awards and had her songs featured on television programming by ABC, Lifetime, and on the WB's Dawson's Creek before health problems emerged in 2006 that ultimately led to her death two years later. Shortly after her death, the New York Times stated that Reider was "a singer-songwriter with a huge following back home and a growing national fan base, who seemed on the cusp of much larger success when her life was destroyed by a rare tumor that ate into her jaw and face, stole her voice, left her blind in one eye and finally killed her (in July 2008) at the age of 30."
Biography
Early life
Reider was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 23, 1978, to Gaile and Rob Reider and grew up as one of six children in nearby Montgomery. Reider grew up surrounded by music. Her father, Rob Reider, was a singer and band leader on the syndicated entertainment program The Bob Braun Show during the 1970s and early '80s. Her grandmother, Ann (Beasley) Reider, was a singer and popular television host on WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio. Reider's parents gave her first guitar when she was in fifth grade. It was a red Gibson Epiphone. Reider's parents were supportive of her interest in music. Reider would later recall, "I started out singing in front of my family in front of the fireplace. I would take out a poker from next to the fireplace and use it as a microphone."
1990s
Reider began performing her own songs publicly in the early 1990s while still a high school student at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy. She started singing in local coffeehouses and later at the Crossroads Community Church in Oakley. Janet Pressley saw Reider perform at the Blue Jordan Coffeehouse in Cincinnati's Northside in 1993. Pressley recalled, "She had the pipes back then."
In the summer of 1995, just before her senior year of high school, Reider met Karen Boone and Dan Stroeh while in a Christian theater group. Over the course of several years Reider and Boone became lovers and partners. Stroeh presided over a backyard wedding and Boone took Reider's last name. They remained a couple until Reider's death. Karen gave birth to two children, whom they parented together.
Reider lived in Columbus, Ohio throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s while majoring in family studies at the Ohio State University, but she did not frequently perform there. She primarily returned to Cincinnati to perform gigs during her early career.
Reider joined the artist cooperative label co-founded by Janet Pressley, Blue Jordan Records, and released her first album, Wonder, in late 1998. According to Reider, the title contained a double meaning: "I wonder about a lot of things, and then I wonder about it all and how wonderful it is." The album was described in the Cincinnati Post as "an incredibly mature project – both musically and lyrically – for someone so young. Her songs mainly deal with the aches of lost and found love, but in a way that is far more seasoned than the angst-filled, angry lyrics of such artists as Alanis Morissette."
Locally, the album was a major success, and Reider won more awards than any other performer at the 1999 Cincinnati Area Pop Music Awards (known in Cincinnati as "Cammy Awards"). She gained recognition as Best Folk/Bluegrass Vocalist, Best New Artist, and Songwriter of the Year.
2000s
In October 2000, two songs from Reider's debut album, "What You Don't Know" and "Piece of Soul," were featured on episodes of the WB show, Dawson's Creek. "What You Don't Know" was played for three minutes on the show. Reider said she experienced being "outside of herself" for a moment: "I had some friends over and we watched it. I'm telling the truth when I say I never watched Dawson's Creek before that. It was surreal and overwhelming how cool it was." She told the Cincinnati Post that traffic on her website increased by 1,200 hits the next day.
