Katy Vernon at 370 Sets, St Paul (July 1, 2025)

As the weather in the Twin Cities yo-yo’s and was climbing back up, the covered patio of the 370 Sets in downtown St. Paul was a perfect place to see singer Katy Vernon perform on an early Tuesday evening.

Katy Vernon is a long-time singer & songwriter, who more recently found her instrument of choice when she picked up the ukulele in the early 2010’s. The British born Vernon has now made her home in Minnesota for more than a decade. She performs solo, though she also has a newer band called Favourite Girl.

At the 370 Sets, Vernon appeared solo on electric ukulele. She’s an affable performer, with quick and easy stories between her songs. An early example was encouraging anyone thinking about picking up an instrument to try ukulele, because “if you can play about three or four chords, you can do about 10,000 songs”. Lily was a song Vernon had written about her daughter, but knew that she had to write one for her other daughter, In Your Shoes (For Daisy).

Vernon’s website (katyvernon.com) has the subtitle “Singer of Sad Songs on a Happy Instrument” and the song of her older brother, Peter, who is non-verbal would probably be better described as bittersweet, but gave some insight to that moniker. Listen was written for election night 2016, and ended up having to be a very different song than she had hoped to write. It was a very haunting and effective number and demonstrated some real depth from Vernon. As she skipped to “a silly little number”, Vernon pulled about of different sounds from the uke in Look to the Sea.

She talked about the new band, talking about how fun it is “to get loud” and as a contrast to what she does solo. The next couple of songs came from Favourite Girl. Thank You was from that feminist rock band and was a rocking and biting satire, even without the rest of the band.

Suit of Hearts, the title track from her 2019 album, was a toe tapper and included the longest instrumental section of the performance so far. Vernon told a story of having the ukulele break in half at the very venue a year ago, as the wind was quite brisk. A hilarious story about church camps was the introduction to Kissing Boys, itself a pretty funny take on that period of her upbringing. Not Going Back, a rock song written before it was a slogan, gave Vernon the recent opportunity to perform it at a rally in St. Paul and seems to have been quite the experience.

As she played it, we definitely got a great dynamic range from Vernon and it was a great moment. We got a cover for a change of pace, starting with the country number Blue Moon of Kentucky. An aptly timed song, Five O’Clock was partly interrupted as a gust of wind knocked over the merch. Vernon efficiently swept it up and then, in true professional style, jumped right back into the song where she had left off.

Vernon continued to mix her amusing banter with different styles of songs and the time was flying by. Gather was a newer song, intended for a full band, but was an effectively fun moment and very evocative of the pandemic era of songwriting. Stopped by seeing by a cyclist who was carrying two cats, Vernon quipped, “I try to stay professional, but that was distracting”.

Nearing the end, Favourite Girl was the first of the songs written for one of the bands where I wished I could hear the full sound. A cover of Walking After Midnight was a fairly good Patsy Cline impression. Vernon wrapped up her two-hour set, thanking the audience and having given a rousing performance.