Rick’s Blog Live | Music
Katie Dineen Is Growing Something in Pensacola
The Best of the Coast Best Musician talks about her new album, her Handlebar wedding reception and the country song that started out as R&B.
Readers named Katie Dineen the Best of the Coast Best Musician for 2026, and she says she had nothing to do with it. “I did not campaign for it,” she told me on Rick’s Blog Live. “I did not know anything about it until it came out.”
- That is what makes the award special. Readers picked her because they know her name and love her music.
From open mics to original songs. Dineen grew up in Fort Walton Beach and moved to Pensacola to attend UWF. She found her community at the Tuesday open mic at Constant Coffee, now Craft. The weekly routine of showing up with something new pushed her to figure out what she wanted to say.
“Through just that weekly accountability of a community and wanting to bring new stuff to the table, that’s kind of how my songwriting journey started.”
What “garden rock” means. Dineen describes her sound as indie garden rock or indie garden pop. She admits it is hard to genre yourself, but the idea is simple: music that feels organic and natural, with little overproduction. Nature and the homespun work of building a garden shape both the sound and the songs.
The album. Dineen released Simmer in August with a show at the Handlebar, and she was on the cover of Inweekly. Highlights from the release night:
- Two friends from Nashville flew in to open the show.
- Birds of a Feather, the local punk puppet troupe, built a giant paper whale for an immersive art experience.
- The venue was personal. Dineen met her husband playing music at the Handlebar, and they held their wedding reception there earlier this year.
Why Water Valley. Dineen recorded all nine songs in Water Valley, Miss., at Dial Back Sound, the studio run by Matt Patton, bassist for the Drive-By Truckers. Starlin used to live in Pensacola and helped reopen the Handlebar, and he produced her first album. When he moved home to Mississippi, she followed.
“I just followed him because I trust him with my stuff,” she said. She describes the nine songs as wet clay. The vase was built, but she wanted her band’s fingerprints on every one.
- The state of the scene. Dineen sees promise: more musicians, more songwriters and more venues. Her new favorite kind of venue is the house show, which she calls homey and intimate. “I’m discovering more and more kind of what’s living right under your nose,” she said.
Have a favorite local artist who belongs on the show? Email me at rick@inweekly.net. Inweekly has promoted local music since our first issue on July 1, 1999, and we will keep doing it.
