Laura Young
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Kathryn Roberts has lived in Berlin, Germany, now for 13 years. She's running a media company, thriving artistically in the city's amazing music scene and teaching fitness and boxing at Box Girls Berlin. Who would guess that she hails from Monticello?!
Roberts grew up on a farm out the Boston Highway, the daughter of nurseryman Gordon Roberts and Dottie McPherson Roberts. She attended Aucilla Christian Academy through the fourth grade, and even when she moved away, she was back in Jefferson County for holidays, summers and other free time. Of her life in Monticello, Roberts recalls hanging out at the Jefferson Country Club pool, visiting Barbara Hughes at Milady's Shop and spending lots of Saturdays at William Hughes' Jefferson Ace Hardware.
Roberts started making music seriously when she went away to college at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, where she majored in Media Studies and played in the hip hop band Function for six years. After college, she returned to North Florida, trying out the music scene in Tallahassee and putting her media degree to work at Penny Pincher, then FSU's Mag Lab, where she did graphic design, photography and audio-visual support and finally at Adventures in Advertising, where the mentorship of Howard Libin showed her how to run a small media business that could still have high output.
Roberts lived for awhile in Athens, Ga., where there were more venues for musicians than in Tallahassee. Eventually, though, she was drawn to Berlin, where she estimates that all-night clubs offer ten times more opportunities to perform, even compared with the music scene she experienced in Paris and London, where clubs close by 2 a.m.
“Berlin is a major artist hub,” says Roberts. “I've never seen anything like it, personally. Once you're there, as an artist you see things differently. The level of skill goes up. That is a blessing as an artist. It gives you a mental space that you can lean in to. I was in a space that I could access my brain deeply.”
Her Berlin-based group, Dungeon Mob Collective, creates psychedelic soul music and g-funk. Roberts also runs her own media company, M-ARCHETYPES, which is geared toward marketing for musicians and artists. Further, she has maintained a lifelong interest in sports, and now she is reaching a point where all three areas of interest – music, marketing and sport – are merging into one.
Roberts started playing soccer in middle school, was a member of her college soccer team and played in the Tallahassee open soccer leagues. She spent several years snowboarding at the sponsored, semi-professional level, competing on the Farmer's Backside snowboarding team. When Roberts got to Berlin, she played some soccer but then took up boxing. She's teaching at Box Girls Berlin, a private gym where she is happy to get paid for working out.
Recently, Roberts has been developing a style of electronic music specifically for fitness workouts. With this endeavor, she aims to market a healthier option for accessing music by relating it to fitness venues rather than bars.
Looking forward, Roberts is beginning to explore how to take her fitness music beyond Berlin. She hopes to start offering fight camps for girls internationally and is currently building partnerships with gyms that might offer her program. She envisions being able to travel more, including spending more time the U.S. Staying connected with her mom and three sisters has become a priority. Interestingly, a perfect midpoint between their homes, which currently span from northern Georgia to South Florida, is Jefferson County, where Roberts plans to return more often.