Long Mama

Long Mama’s music blisters with the heart and grit of someone who has lost hard, loved harder, and licked her burns until they stung then silvered. In a drafty attic just west of the Milwaukee River they grew up on, you’ll find songwriter Kat Wodtke (Wood-key) raking through notebooks in search of a salve: words, stories, and sounds to temper the dumpster fires we never mean to light. Flickering behind each song is Wodtke’s lived insight into our human faults and fissures — the moments in life when we can slip and lose our footing or claw our way out, better people on the other side of the blaze.


Poor Pretender, Long Mama’s debut album released October 2022, embraces a rich spectrum of light and shadow, heat and cold. The ten-song collection’s palette of country, folk, indie rock, and punk reflects its makers' coming-of-age in the rustbelt crossroads of north, south, east, and west. Engineered by Erik Koskinen and recorded live over a long, snowy weekend in Cleveland, Minnesota, the record showcases the band’s particular ability to conjure the beautiful in the broken, the silver in the ore. Featured in No Depression’s Now Hear This Round-up, Poor Pretender has been called “a winner all the way” (Country Music People Magazine) and “gently crafted perfection” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).