Katie Reider, 30; Was Singer/Songwriter ("What You Don't Know")
Bill Schenley
Photo:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/102/311660406_01996037c0.jpg?v=0
FROM: The Cincinnati Enquirer ~
By Lauren Bishop
Cincinnati-born singer-songwriter Katie Reider, 30,
has died in New Jersey after a two-year battle with
a rare tumor that robbed her of her ability to perform,
but not her will to survive.
Reider was the daughter of Rob Reider, best known
as a singer on the Cincinnati-based syndicated
entertainment program “The Bob Braun Show” in the
1970s and ’80s, and Gaile Reider, who died of cancer
in August 2007 at age 58.
“The mother-and-child reunion going on in heaven right
now must be unbelievable,” her father said Monday
from his Montgomery home. His daughter had died early
that day.
Katie Reider, one of six children, grew up in Montgomery
surrounded by music. She received her first guitar, a red
Gibson Epiphone, from her parents when she was in fifth
grade.
“I didn’t play it that much at first, but when my brother
started picking it up and getting good at it, I thought,
‘Hey I need to give this a try,’” she said in a biography on
her Web site, www.katiereider.com.
“We saw a gregariousness in her before she was 7 years old,”
Rob Reider said. “We have a picture of her when she was
5 or 6, holding one of my microphones, singing into it like
she was on stage. She just never had any fear of being on
stage or jumping out of airplane and skydiving 12,000 feet
above the ground.”
Reider developed a folk-pop style that’s been compared
to Sarah McLachlan, Ani DiFranco and Shawn Colvin.
Her talents as a songwriter, musician and performer
surprised even her father.
“I could always count on myself to find a good harmony
part, and Katie’s were better than mine,” he said.
Janet Pressley, a singer-songwriter and co-founder of
Reider’s label, Blue Jordan Records, recalled seeing
Reider perform at the now-closed Blue Jordan Coffeehouse
in Northside around 1993. Reider was then in high school
at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy.
“She had the pipes then,” Pressley said.
“I just (saw) this beautiful face upturned and singing into
the mic. She was a little nervous, but her beauty just
came through.”
Reider had a knack for putting her audiences at ease,
Pressley said.
“She genuinely wanted to connect with her audience and
her listeners,” she said. “She was very down to earth and
accessible to people.”
The Blue Jordan Coffeehouse launched Reider’s career.
“I went and hung out. They have really good coffee and
really good music,” the Ohio State University graduate
told The Enquirer in 2002. “Tyler Brown, who later
produced (debut album) ‘Wonder,’ asked me to play
between sets. I did, and he said ‘Katie, you should make
an album.’ So my music career started out with me being
terrified in a coffee shop.”
Blue Jordan released three of Reider’s albums: “Wonder”
(1998), “No Retakes” (2001) and “I Am Ready” (2002).
She asked her father to co-produce and engineer her last
album, “Simplicity” (2004), which features her brother,
Robbie, of Norwood, on guitar.
Rob Reider called his daughter’s request “probably the
nicest thing a daughter could do for her former performer
father.”
Reider performed everywhere from small cafés to big
events, including Taste of Cincinnati and the Tall Stacks
Music, Arts & Heritage Festival, sharing stages with artists
including Catie Curtis, Melissa Ferrick, Anne Heaton,
Michelle Malone, Antigone Rising and Ember Swift. She
won five local music awards and gained national recognition
when her songs were used on ABC, Lifetime and the WB
series “Dawson’s Creek.”
In the midst of working on her fifth album and touring,
Reider went to the dentist in February 2006 for what she
thought was a toothache. After multiple diagnoses and
treatments, doctors diagnosed her in June 2007 with a rare
myofibroblastic inflammation tumor that had progressed
from her sinus and upper left jaw to behind her left eye.
The noncancerous growth left Reider blind in her left eye
and took away her ability to speak clearly and sing.
Treatment included multiple rounds of chemotherapy,
which nearly shrank the tumor in its entirety.
Throughout her illness, Reider stayed connected with her
friends and fans by posting updates on her blog,
www.myspace.com/katiereiderband. In her last entry,
posted June 21, Reider talked about having a “strange
cough” that required her to take antibiotics through a
feeding tube. But she could still eat some food by mouth.
“I have found that nothing is more tasty than an avocado
or a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese,” she wrote.
She also wrote about how much she enjoyed a June
vacation with her partner of 10 years, Karen Reider, and
their two sons – Aiden, 3, and Koen, 1 – to Reider’s
father’s house in Maine.
“It was truly amazing,” she wrote. “I was able to rest and
soak in some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.
We had such a good time, we’re headed back in August.”
Reider’s father said that trip was one of his favorite
memories of his daughter. It was also where Reider’s
mother spent the last healthy days of her life, he said.
“(Katie) had never been there, and her comment was it
was all she hoped it would be and more,” he said.
Reider also wrote about postponing reconstructive facial
surgery so she could go on another family vacation to
Bethany Beach, Del., over the Fourth of July.
“There is something I am learning through this experience,”
she wrote. “It is this, sometimes it is okay to be selfish and
get what you want. If that means putting off something for
a week or two because you need that time (and it won’t
hurt you physically) it is okay.”
She ended the entry: “Thanks for your prayers, thoughts,
calls, e-mails, love … thank you. Thank you for your love.
I fight, I will keep fighting, thank you for your support!”
While in Bethany Beach, Reider began to hemorrhage from
a major artery in her brain as the tumor dislodged. Doctors
were able to stop the bleeding and scheduled surgery for
August to remove the rest of the tumor and reconstruct the
left side of her face and upper palate.
But the bleeding started again Sunday, and Reider died just
before 7 a.m. Monday in an ambulance that was
transporting her from a hospital near her home in Montclair,
N.J., to Beth Israel Hospital in New York City.
The news shocked friends and fans who had hoped she
was headed toward a full recovery.
Aaron Maas of Liberty Township, who grew up on
Castleford Lane in Montgomery with the Reiders, called
Reider “the greatest neighborhood kid to grow up with.”
She played football, baseball, army and was “especially
phenomenal” at flashlight tag, said Maas, 32.
“She always had a smile and one of the most genuine laughs
I ever heard,” he said in an e-mail. “She never failed to
wave when driving by. Years had even gone by after we all
‘grew up’ and gone our separate ways, yet when I did
finally run into her, you wouldn’t have known that a minute
had gone by. She was just as open and wonderful has she
always had been.”
Those who knew Reider hope that her music will continue
to touch people even after her death.
In May, fan and friend Lauren Fernandes launched a Web
site, www.500Kin365.org, where fans can donate $1 for a
digital compilation of nine of Reider’s original songs.
All proceeds from the compilation and private donations
will continue to help Reider’s family pay her medical bills
and funeral arrangements, which are pending.
“I know that she is going to continue to make such an
impact in a lot of lives out there through her music (and)
through her voice,” Fernandes said. “She’s always been
an angel.”
In addition to her partner, sons, father and brother,
survivors include another brother, Andy, of Montgomery,
and three sisters, Kristin of New York state, Abby of
Indiana and Beth of California.
Services are pending.
---
"What You Don't Know"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX5o8B6RT4A
William Brownstein
The Star-Ledger
Newark, NJ
The internet keeps her voice alive
A Montclair singer dies, friends spread her music
Monday, August 04, 2008
BY KELLY HEYBOER
Star-Ledger Staff
During her decade-long career, indie rock singer Katie Reider built up
a small but loyal base of fans who bought her albums and cheered at
her soulful concerts.
In death, she may be reaching more people than she ever did in life.
The 30-year-old Montclair musician died earlier this month after a
long battle with a rare disorder that left her face deformed and
robbed her of her voice. But even as her family and friends attended
her memorial service last weekend, Reider was gaining new fans.
She has become something of an internet sensation thanks to a website
started by her friends. The goal of the site -- called 500,000 Hits in
365 Days (500kin365.org) -- is to get half a million people to
download Reider's music in the next year.
It seems to be working. In the last few weeks, more than 52,000 people
have visited the site to hear and download Reider's music. More have
passed around her poignant story and songs via blogs, e-mails and
social networking sites.
"It's been one of the craziest journeys I've even seen," said Lauren
Fernandes, a friend who came up with the idea for the website. "It
started with her fans, and it ended with all these people who didn't
even know her."
Reider (pronounced "Rider") grew up in Ohio, one of five children of
Rob Reider, a band leader on a Cincinnati-based television show.
She learned to play guitar and started her own career as a singer-
songwriter while she was still a teenager. She went on to release four
CDs, perform around the country and have her songs featured on
television shows, including "Dawson's Creek."
She met her partner, Karen Boone, in a high school drama program.
Boone eventually took Reider's last name, and the couple used a sperm
donor to have their two sons, Aiden, 3, and Koen, 1.
While working on her fifth album in 2006, Reider went to the dentist
with what she thought was a toothache. The following year, she was
diagnosed with a rare myofibroblastic inflammation tumor.
Reider underwent rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. The tumor
shrank, but over the next year the disease and treatment caused her to
go blind in one eye, have her teeth pulled and eventually lose her
voice.
"This thing that has tried to stop me over the past two years has not
won. It has not robbed me of my joy, my love for the people around
me," Reider wrote in a blog she published to keep her friends and fans
up to date on her health.
Fernandes, a friend and fan who hadn't seen Reider in years, was
following her health battle from California, where she works in the
entertainment industry. She came up with the idea for the 500,000 hits
in 365 days site, and the singer loved the idea.
"It was a perfect way to keep Katie focused," said Karen Reider.
The site was launched in May, on Reider's 30th birthday. It included
Reider's story, footage of her final public performance and a way for
new fans to download nine of her songs for $1, with the proceeds going
toward her medical bills. (The money will now be used for her funeral
expenses, as well.)
As summer began, Reider's condition seemed to improve. Doctors told
her the tumor was more than 95 percent gone. But while on vacation in
Delaware, she began to hemorrhage from an artery in her brain.
She died July 14 in an ambulance that was taking her to a New York
City hospital.
As news of her death spread, hits on the website began to rise.
The idea that her songs are finding a new audience after her death is
bittersweet, said Robbie Reider, her older brother and fellow
musician.
"I'm sad that you'll only have her history. You won't get to see her
perform live," Robbie Reider said.
But Reider would have loved the idea that something good came of her
death, her friends and family said. She often said the worst part of
her illness wasn't the pain or physical deformities, but that she felt
like she was no longer an inspiration to people.
She was wrong, Karen Reider said.
"Even in her darkest moment, she left such an impression on people,"
she said. "She would have wanted us to find inspiration by that."
Kelly Heyboer may be reached at khey...@starledger.com or (973)
392-5929.
©2008 Star Ledger
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