A Fresh Look Through “Bette Davis Eyes” With Katrina Woolverton & Val Garay

We live in an era of almost constant reinvention, with more cultural history at our fingertips than ever. It’s nigh impossible to remix or retouch an old idea for a new generation of creative sensibilities. This tantalizing prospect drew singer/songwriter Katrina Woolverton and Grammy-winning producer Val Garay to explore “Bette Davis Eyes” through a whole new lens of EDM, revitalizing the track to inspire an enthusiastic energy, tuned to set aside one’s worries.

Ironically, worries of being “sensible” almost redirected both from their creative futures. Garay recalls how he was going to Stanford School of Medicine, yet a chance recruitment into a band that hit it big helped him “slide into the music business, sorta sideways,” he explains. “Then I did that for like the next 10 years inside of [more] bands.” Not long after his tenure as a performer, Garay would be drawn to producing on the other side of the glass, guiding artists like Woolverton.

Meanwhile, Woolverton’s career aspirations began in earnest, including being on Star Search at a “very young age”, as well as training under Elizabeth Howard’s school for performance and vocal lessons. As she recalls, “This one time I sang ‘Papa Can You Hear Me?’ from Yentl, which is a big song for a little girl. This mom of one of the other students came up to me afterwards and she was sobbing – she said ‘That was so beautiful!’ and I was really moved by that, because we’re kind of used to our parents being like ‘You’re great! That was great!’ but when you make someone else’s mom cry? You’re kind of like ‘Whoa! I may have done something really right!’ However, I did step away from it and much like Val pursued a more sensible endeavor – I went to law school.”

Yet even in law school, Woolverton would be drawn back to entertainment, pursuing a masters in entertainment and media law. “It felt like it was meant to be,” Woolverton explains, “I mean what were the chances that it just happened to be an entertainment and media program? So I did it, and I’m really glad I did, because then I got to marry both sides of that. It’s given me a different outlook than some people, because I do love it so much. It puts things in a very practical perspective.”

While Woolverton stepped away for a time to practice law, fate would bring her and Garay together through their mutual friend, the late Glenn Larsson, creator of Magnum PI, PJ & the Bear, The Fall Guy, Battlestar Galactica, and The Six Million Dollar Man, among other famous shows. “But he started as a singer,” Garay explains, “in a band called The Four Preps. He wrote a song called ‘26 Miles Across The Sea.’” Whereas for Woolverton, “I’d become friends with his then girlfriend –they later married. We would go to movie nights and he would get screeners – he had a big theater in his house with the two 35mm projectors and a projectionist. He would be on that Beverly Hills circuit where you could get the latest film reels, and he would be able to screen it for everybody.

“And he knew that I wanted to get back into music. So he told my husband – then fiance – ‘You really have to meet Val! He’s going to be here. I think he’d be perfect for Katrina!’ and, well… the rest is history,” she says, both smiling to one another as they recall those days. “We did Katrina’s first album 15 years ago,” he says. “Right, you were at my wedding,” Woolverton says with a smile, “It was 2009 and we’d started planning right before that in August. Basically as soon as I was married, we started.” She laughs, “Instead of going all over with my husband, I started traveling with Val,” Woolverton’s husband was very supportive, holding down the fort at home while she’d fly up to San Francisco every other week to work in San Rafel. Bonnie Hayes, the singer/songwriter behind several hits like “Have A Heart” and “Love Letters.” “There’s some serious legacy there,” Garay explains, noting Hayes’ brother also performed with Huey Lewis. 

That’s what really sticks out in the midst of our conversation – how many elbows they’ve both brushed up against and worked with, some just as next door neighbors, others as lifelong friends. The world of music just naturally weaves around and through their lives. Yet the dynamic duo themselves found themselves parting ways for a time professionally, after their work was done with the album. “Not because she didn’t like me,” Garay jokes, both of them chuckling, “but Katrina needed to grow – she needed to go out and spread her wings, so she started working with other artists and producers.” That hiatus would come to a close fifteen years later. “She was very successful, and she came back to me three months ago, asking me if I would do this record.”

Woolverton herself was coming out of a “dry spell, so to speak. I never wanted to leave music, but I just wasn’t feeling inspiration or a specific vision. Then that last summer I started sailboat racing with my husband. My husband’s been a boater his whole life – so we got one that’s as big as you can handle as two people, and we’d go out racing Wednesday nights. It’s called the Sunset Series, and being part of the team, being included, was just so much fun. It gave me a sense of confidence I didn’t realize I was lacking – a real sense of camaraderie that I desperately needed.” It was during this time Woolverton was also falling in love with EDM music, “more and more of those songs were piling up in my favorites playlist. So when the sail racing season was over, with time to reflect, I had this clear vision that I wanted to do an EDM project. I loved my dance songs from before, and then I had another dance song chart that was an OPM Remix – that was so fun, and I said to my husband ‘I want to go back to the studio’ and he was all for it. He’s like ‘You want to do another song or an EP?’ and I said ‘No, I really want to do a whole album,’ and he instantly said I should really talk to Val.”

Woolverton’s husband and Garay had stayed in touch, seeing each other “at least every month or so” to talk about life and their latest work. Just as she was finding her muse, Garay had been asking about her. When she explained her idea to him, he enthusiastically replied “Let’s do it!” While she had concerns that EDM would be an odd fit for her theme, Garay responded with “It’s music.” 

As for specifically revisiting “Bette Davis Eyes”, it’d been on Woolverton’s mind. “EDM is such a different process, it’s such a different sound, it really gives you a lot of freedom in what you want to put into the track, and I thought ‘Why not? Who better than Val to reinvent the song in a new genre!’ and he was totally up for it.”

When asked about reinventing the song, Woolverton says, “Reinventing to me has a lot to do with music stylistically right now. A lot of the records that you hear or songs that you hear – you know whether it’s streaming or radio – but the songs are very brief in terms of the melodic content and structure. And kids are now getting deeper and deeper into the music from 1975 to 2000, so they’re starting to appreciate the melodic structure of those songs and the lyrics.”

Garay chimes in, “What happens is during that process – and the proof is in the pudding – because I have a friend who runs the royalty division of the entire Universal Music Group. Right now, old music outsells new music, that’s a fact. So when you have a song like… ‘Watermelon Sugar’, that’s a good example, where you hear the same two words for three minutes and 40 seconds and nothing else? Stylistically it’s that. That’s the kind of song in hip hop music, but when you have a song like ‘Betty Davis Eyes’, which is such an iconic record. 

So when Katrina came to me with the idea of doing it as an EDM record, we’d have to completely reconsider the track. It’s not a cover in the sense that you’re covering that song, it’s kind of the same way that the young girl who redid ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You’ – the Frankie Valli hit. All she sang was the chorus, she didn’t sing any verses, she just sang ‘I love you baby’ and if it’s quite alright, I need you baby!’. There was a big hit recently called ‘Hands On Me’ which is lyrically ‘Stand By Me’ and it’s that melody, so they had to credit the original writers. Still, it was a big hit and so people are starting to gravitate towards these kinds of great melodic songs.” It was this wave of stylistic rebirth that prompted Garay into finally exploring “Bette Davis Eyes” for a new audience, “because I’ve been approached a zillion times to recut that song, and I always said ‘Absolutely not’ because it’s just too iconic. Imagine Paul McCartney going in to redo ‘Yesterday’.”

“But when she gave me that idea? I said ‘Now that’s a whole different lane! That would be an interesting thing to try…’ I mean the song’s been sped up because it’s an EDM song so the original track was around 113 beats a minute this one is like 125. The instrumentation is totally different. Katrina sang it somewhat similar to the original, but still has her own presence, and it’s a completely new record.” When talking about the song itself, I noted how it resembled almost a generational conversation, like Paramore’s ‘Let the Flames Begin’ and ‘Part Two’, with Garay nodding, “Yes, good example. They compliment each other.”

As for her goals with this new album, Woolverton eagerly replies, “I hope it gets people up and dancing! At its heart, it’s really a dance record, perfect for clubs.” Garay nods along, adding, “That’s very true we even – we were sitting around listening- and we were all chair dancing. We were just sitting, talking, bumping to our own thing.

“It also gave me a sense of connectedness,” Woolverton says,”Even when I listen to it alone if I’m just doing something in the house, or I’m driving – there’s something about the beat, the rhythm, and how it makes me feel peaceful. Even if it’s a crazy kind of song, I feel that I’m connected to other people. It’s a feeling and an overall experience of being a part of that music. I know it sounds a little out there, but that’s how it makes me feel as a lover of EDM, you know? I want to hear it when I’m partying; I want to hear it when I’m relaxing; I want to hear it when I’m driving; I want to hear it when I’m boating! It just always fits everything because it originates in that dance-y feeling. Those feelings of euphoria when you listen to it, whether you’re in the club or enjoying life at home.”

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The album This Is Katrina Woolverton is available now and is on music streaming services.

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With over ten of writing years in the industry, Elijah’s your guy for all things strange, obscure, and spooky in gaming. When not writing articles here or elsewhere, he’s tinkering away at indie games and fiction of his own.