Natasha Kozaily just wanted one Kate Bush dance party.
In August of 2017, Kozaily rallied together eight local women musicians to create Baby Bushka, a Kate Bush cover band, to perform songs live for a party at the Casbah that December.
Things snowballed from there.
Baby Bushka Farewell Show:
7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024.
Music Box, 1337 India St., Little Italy.
$49.75.
On a recent sweltering afternoon this August, the Bushes, as they refer to themselves, gathered in Kozaily's airy Golden Hill apartment, surrounded by books, art and instruments. The band is rehearsing for their farewell tour and final show in San Diego, and the laughter and synchronicity between the women hints at seven years well spent together.
Kozaily nods towards keyboardist Marie Haddad, who kicks things off with the first twinkling notes of Bush's "Wuthering Heights." Even with a partial band in a dining room, even with limited instrumentation, the run-through is electric.
Billed as "the Kate Bush experience of your dreams," calling Baby Bushka a cover band is an understatement, almost an insult. This is a theatrical, almost spiritual experience. For Kozaily, anything less than that wouldn't do Kate Bush justice.
"A lot of Kate's music are stories and narratives — especially her early work. And she sort of puts herself in the shoes of different human experiences. So you have songs coming from the perspective of a soldier or a ghost or a housewife or father or mother," Kozaily said. "So as we started diving into the music, and because she's so theatrical and her music videos are like that and even her stage performance is — it just made sense that you couldn't just go on stage and play the music. It had to be visual. It had to have that dance in it."
Fast forward seven years, and what was just meant to be just one night is now a beloved San Diego staple: a band, a sisterhood, a high-octane theatrical production — and a uniting force for audiences locally and around the world. There's something magical about sharing space with hundreds of fellow humans, as rapt in amazed attention as they are dancing and singing along.
Together, the band has gone through a lot. Music and show stuff, from the intensive transposing of Kate Bush's music for multi-part harmonies and new instrumentations to costumes, set designs and narratives. They've toured the UK and Ireland multiple times. They've recorded and released an album, just in time for COVID-19 to keep live audiences away from this phenomenon that "you had to see it live."
A few months after the pandemic began, Baby Bushka experienced an unfathomable tragedy. Band member Nina Leilani Deering was killed in a car accident. Kozaily was the last person to see her or speak to her, just a few hours before.
"It was absolutely life-changing," Kozaily said of losing Deering. "She was a very big part of our lives, and a big part of the band — and a big part of the entire music community in San Diego, so it wasn't just us who felt the shockwaves of that. When that happened, you're not really thinking about the band, or whether you're going to continue. You're just sort of dealing with the death, the grief."
Kozaily said that for her personally, the loss turned her own life upside down and recalibrated what was important.
And after a long period of grief, the band decided to continue. "There was a strong feeling that started to come that this can't be the end. And that one of the ways you remember her, and you honor her is to continue," Kozaily said.
Kozaily said Kate Bush's music can be a salve during rough times.
"I think for getting through things, I would say 'Jig of Life,'" Kozaily said when asked if there's a Kate Bush song she turned to during these times. "The song is about the future self talking to the younger self saying, 'Don't give up, let me live, because in the future you have kids and you have this full life and look, I'm here, and I'm alive, and I've survived, and that's so powerful, as a sort of totem, or to hold on to. That vision, that bigger picture and that hope.'"
One more line from that song: ''Never, never say goodbye."
Over the years, the band has transformed its members, adding more women as others stepped away to focus on other projects. Throughout all this, Baby Bushka has remained a powerful sisterhood.
More Baby Bushka bandmembers on ending Baby Bushka:
I also asked some of the "Bushes" about what they'll take with them from Baby Bushka into the rest of their future projects and creative lives:
Batya MacAdam Somer:
"I really feel like this group of women and Kate Bush — I feel like the personal message for me is courage. Have the courage to express yourself, to take risks, to, you know, be weird. So that's definitely one piece of the puzzle, maybe the biggest. I think also it's just been a very powerful lesson in trust. In trusting your bandmates, and trusting other women. That's, I think, been a really special thing that's also been very personal for me."
Lexi Pulido:
"Oh, so much. Like everything. I already was given the gift, the invitation to becoming a singing dancer for this project, so singing and dancing … It feels good to share that you know, as a teacher — finding these values and creating pillars of value for the community. This is just potent and shareable and colorful, and like we have to just color everything more as people. So I'll take that into everything project-wise, and also teaching — which is I think one of the highest forms of art."
Heather Nation:
"There's a strong sisterhood, and this very dense feeling of like, I can be a woman, and I don't have to be afraid of what I'm wearing. I don't have to be afraid of what people think of me. Like, I have seven other women by my side at all times, you know, and that's — it's a really, really strong and liberating feeling. In the world of music, it almost feels like every woman for their own. It's a very complex process navigating being a freelancer in the music industry as a woman, and just to have this big group of beautiful personalities, different women come together and make it happen, and see like a whole tour out? Like successfully? And come home in one piece? Despite the injuries and the sickness and the stuff we had to go through. It just makes you feel like wow, like we really won. This is a big win. So I'll take that with me."
Marie Haddad:
"I think what I'll carry the most are the friendships that we've bonded. When you create music together, there's always a bond. And this is a special group of women and everyone brings their own talents, but also of course our own personalities and we all have just kind of meshed together and we've become this one thing. And I will miss that for sure … I'm grateful that they found me and brought me in and I'm grateful to have all these experiences we've had, traveling and learning these songs together, performing them together, changing them together, adding visual concepts, just creating together. It's been kind of magical."
Kozaily refers to everything the band has gone through as "peak experience" — the highs and the lows, as well the connection to a network of Kate Bush fans around the globe. It is still something magical and almost unimaginable to her. Miraculous. And that's sort of why she feels like it needs to end.
"Every show we've done feels like it could be the last. Because it's such a miracle to put the show together. Eight women. It's a huge two-act musical. It's expensive. Going on tour. And we all have other jobs and other projects that we're doing. So this is just a piece of our lives — I mean, a big important piece, but that's it," Kozaily said. "It's one thing to sort of just deny that and continue and then one day wake up and be like, oh that was the last show, I guess. I wish I had known."
For Kozaily, it's about the courage to close a chapter, or to say goodbye. And in doing so, they can be intentional and end things in the most Baby Bushka way possible — with theatrics, with an almost academic approach to the music and Kate Bush as an artist. And with a big farewell show for their local fans and one more UK tour.
"Somehow making that decision has supercharged us," Kozaily said.
In that August afternoon rehearsal, the band skillfully and beautifully sang, danced and worked their way through a lengthy set of Kate Bush arrangements, with Kozaily navigating artistic questions with an air of collaboration, care and empowerment. While Kozaily was a clear bandleader and visionary of the group, her leadership seems to perch squarely on the band's seven years of building this unit — together.
On moving forward and onwards, Kozaily said what she'll take from this project is how fundamentally important live music is — the energy and connection of sharing something like music with a room full of other people, and especially with the people you're making that art with.
"I don't think any of us will ever be the same. I think this project has changed our lives for the better. And I'm just so grateful," Kozaily said.
