Wisconsin Singer/Songwriter Series - Rachael Kilgour

Canadian-American songwriter Rachael Kilgour is a 2025 Mcknight Music Fellow, a winner of the NewSong Music Competition (2015) and Kerrville New Folk Contest (2017), and has been featured at NYC’s Lincoln Center and The Kennedy Center in Washington DC. On stage Kilgour expertly balances her poignant, literate songs with her quick wit, landing somewhere between a comedy special and a memorial service. Listeners can expect to laugh, weep, and reflect on their own relationships with fatherhood, mortality and grief.

            Her oft-noted “unapologetic lyrics” (Rolling Stone) and “master crafted indie folk” sensibilities (Billboard) are on full display in her latest release, a collection of delicately woven songs.

            This heartfelt release is entitled "My Father Loved Me". The album was recorded in her late father’s native Ontario and was produced by JUNO-award winning and Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Rose Cousins. In the spare and often gutting language for which she is known, Kilgour gives us a complex portrait of a man seen through his daughter’s eyes. The record poses questions about belonging, inheritance, and grief and triumphantly affirms the value of one ordinary working man’s life.

            Like her father, Kilgour is a hard worker. She comes by her considerable skills honestly, honing her craft over the past decade in listening rooms, festivals, concert halls, recording studios, and picking up accolades along the way.