Today we’d like to introduce you to Kim Reteguiz.
Hi Kim, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I started singing in church when I was three years old. I was THAT kid…running around and disrupting the priest…so my mom started bringing me into the choir with her to keep me in check. I started singing right alongside her. I wrote my first song in elementary school, and at 15, I performed an original I had written about unrequited love in a talent show and took second place.
From there, I studied opera, classical music and piano at Ole Miss on a full vocal scholarship, but after my freshman (Yes…I flunked out…too much freedom!) year, I returned home to Florida.
My creative life eventually expanded into media. I studied Media Production, Management and Technology at the University of Florida and graduated with honors, worked in radio and television news and co-created a bilingual television program called Latino in the City, which featured lots of original music and won several Associated Press Awards. Storytelling, music, culture and community became threads that followed me into everything I did creatively.
My entry into Jacksonville’s live music scene was a little less glamorous. I started out singing as a side hustle to pay for a car accident that wasn’t my fault. I sang alongside another vocalist who had much more live-band experience than I did, playing some seriously gritty backwoods bars in some pretty sketchy parts of town. She eventually decided that life wasn’t for her and left — which suddenly made me the lead singer. I was terrified. But I stuck it out, learned how to front a band by doing it, and before I knew it those gritty bar gigs had turned into swanky venues, rooftops, weddings, festivals and television appearances.
Music ultimately became my main artistic outlet. I come from a strong Puerto Rican family hailing from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, and we have some seriously deep musical roots. I began blending those influences with the blues, soul, funk and Southern rock I grew up loving in Jacksonville. That became Kim Reteguiz & the Black Cat Bones.
Over the years, we performed throughout the region, played major festivals like Springing the Blues and Arkansas’ King Biscuit Fest and stages across the U.S., competed in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, and became part of Jacksonville’s amazingly diverse live music scene.
Then COVID changed everything.
Like so many musicians, we lost the traditional live-performance path almost overnight. Instead of stopping, I pivoted heavily into private and corporate entertainment, TRIED my hand at online performance but that wasn’t for me…but through the private space of music, we were able to stay alive and build a very successful business. That chapter taught me even more about professionalism, production, the business of music and the value of creating a complete experience for an audience.
Now I’m bringing those lessons back to the Black Cat Bones.
We’ve spent the last several years writing new music, reinventing older songs from lost recordings and developing what I call Southern Bugalú — a blend of Puerto Rican and Latin rhythms, Santana-style rock and blues, 1960s New York Latin soul and boogaloo, funk, and the classic Jacksonville Southern rock of bands like the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd with lots of bi-lingual lyrics in English and Spanish.
It sounds like a lot I know! But we’ve actually been building toward this sound for more than a decade. I finally feel like we’ve found the clearest expression of what the Black Cat Bones was always meant to be, and we’re incredibly excited to share it with the world.
The goal isn’t to recreate who we were before COVID. It’s to build something stronger, more intentional and more sustainable from everything I’ve learned along the way — and everything we started creating together more than a decade ago.
I don’t really see this chapter as a comeback.
I see it as an evolution. But we surely are COMING BACK!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Has it been easy?? Absolutely not…but I’m not sure I would change any of that…it’s what the good songs are made from…
One of my earliest struggles was simply learning how to be a frontwoman. When the more experienced singer I started with left the band, I suddenly found myself standing in the lead position before I felt ready for it. I was terrified. There is a huge difference between knowing how to sing and knowing how to command a stage, communicate with musicians, read a room and carry an entire show. I learned all of that the hard way…by doing it over and over again in a LOT of sketch bars but I LOVE that I got to experience that and tell those stories today.
The music business itself has also never been an easy road. Being talented is only one small part of it. You have to learn how to book yourself, promote yourself, negotiate, build relationships, manage personalities, keep musicians working and somehow still protect the creative part of yourself that made you want to do this in the first place.
Then came the online social media revolution, which I’ll admit was a struggle for me. Social media was supposed to be this incredible way for independent artists to reach people directly, and in many ways it was. But I never felt completely natural performing to a cell phone. I felt a little ridiculous doing it, and then I would watch the video back and cringe at every tiny flaw the camera captured while hoping somebody…anybody…would actually stop scrolling long enough to watch it.
Then algorithms became such a huge part of who actually gets seen. Something that once felt like it could be a promising way to spread our sound started feeling like another skill set entirely. Some artists are brilliant at it. I simply wasn’t. I knew how to connect with a live audience in a room, but translating that connection through a phone screen was much harder for me. I’m still learning how to navigate that world without letting it dictate the creative work itself.
And then, of course, COVID happened. For a working band, it felt like someone simply turned the lights off. Shows disappeared, venues struggled, musicians scattered and the momentum we had spent years building was suddenly gone.
That was probably one of the biggest turning points for me. I could either mourn what we had lost or figure out another way forward. I moved heavily into private and corporate entertainment, and thankfully that became very successful. But even success can take you down a different road than the one you originally imagined. For several years, I was performing constantly while my own original music and the Black Cat Bones were sitting quietly in the background collecting dust.
There was another strange struggle happening at the same time: I had become really happy in my personal life, and suddenly I couldn’t write. For years, I joked that I wrote songs about two things — bad men and food. Well, the bad men were gone! And I didn’t want to write about COVID. I didn’t want to write pandemic songs or force myself to turn that experience into art, so for a while the songwriting just stopped.
Then my dad died after a long battle with COVID-related illness, and something shifted. I started writing again, but not in the way I expected. Instead of writing directly about grief, I found myself writing in the style of the music he loved most — Motown, doo-wop and romantic boleros. For me, that music comes very naturally, and once I opened that door, it was like a floodgate broke.
Suddenly I was writing about being in love. I was writing about little moments that might seem insignificant but end up being the things you remember most. I started writing about my history, my family, my culture and traditions, and looking backward at pieces of my life with a completely different perspective.
And, of course, I still write about food.
I will always write about food.
That creative flood eventually helped lead me back to the Black Cat Bones, but coming back to the original project brought another challenge: figuring out who we are now instead of trying to recreate who we were ten years ago. We’ve had old recordings disappear, songs that needed to be rebuilt, musicians and circumstances change, and an entire music industry evolve around us.
There have also been plenty of moments of self-doubt. I think most artists understand that feeling of wondering whether you missed your window, whether you should have done something differently, or whether anyone is still interested in what you have to say….AND why are we doing this because it’s not about fame…for most of us, that never happens.
What I’ve learned is that there isn’t necessarily one window.
Sometimes you get another one…and you climb through it with a lot more experience, a much stronger sense of who you are, and far less interest in becoming what someone else thinks you should be…such as being FAMOUS!! Definitely not here to be famous! I’m just creating and a contributing to my community and city…
So, that’s where I am now.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a singer, songwriter, bandleader and creative storyteller. My main artistic project is Kim Reteguiz & the Black Cat Bones, and the sound we’ve been developing is something I call Southern Bugalú.
I also work extensively as a professional corporate and event singer. I perform with Bread and Butter and Emerald Empire, serve as a singer and bandleader with Bay Kings Band, and am a featured vocalist with Crescendo Amelia Big Band. Most recently I have started singing with the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra out of Cocoa Beach. That side of my career is incredibly important to me because it keeps me working across different styles, audiences and musical environments. It has made me a stronger performer, bandleader and communicator onstage, and it has taught me how much professionalism, pacing, production and audience experience matter. Plus I get to wear costumes and do costume changes!!! I adore doing that! I mean, if this is going to be my life then make it fun and beautiful!!!
But back to our original passion project…The BCBs and Southern Bugalú brings together the musical worlds that shaped me: Puerto Rican and Latin rhythms like jíbaro music, bomba y plena, salsa and merengue, 1960s New York boogaloo and Latin soul, blues, funk, Santana-style rock and the Jacksonville Southern rock I grew up around. On paper, that probably sounds like a lot — but to me, it all belongs together. That mix is really a reflection of who I am culturally, geographically and musically.
And while the stories I’m telling now are deeply rooted in my own Puerto Rican culture and my experience growing up in Jacksonville, I don’t think you have to share my exact background to connect with them. Everybody has family traditions, foods, sayings, music, memories and little rituals that help shape who they are. That’s really what I’m writing about now — the specific details of my own life, but in a way that I hope makes people think about their own families, cultures and histories too. When they hear our music, I want them to think of their own imperfect beautiful life they created.
Southern Bugalú also feels like an evolution of the musicians I come from. My Tío Frank Reteguiz was a percussionist and conga maker whose instruments and musicianship became part of a much larger Latin music tradition. He played with major artists including Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, and the congas he built became part of his legacy in their own right. My Tío Tavin Pumarejo came from another side of that musical world — a well-known Puerto Rican jíbaro singer, troubadour and comedian whose work was rooted in traditional Puerto Rican music and storytelling. Then there were my own parents, who were musicians as well, so music was never something that felt separate from family life.
When I look at Southern Bugalú now, I can hear pieces of all of that in it — percussion, humor, storytelling, tradition, improvisation and the instinct to make people move. In a lot of ways, it feels less like I invented something new and more like I took the musical inheritance I was given, mixed it with everything Jacksonville and the rest of the Southeast gave me, and found my own voice inside of it. Georgia shows up in my songwriting quite a bit too — Jacksonville has been jokingly called “South Georgia” more times than I can count, and geographically and musically those Southern influences have always crossed the state line…We also had to go up there a lot just to work for a burger…but now when we drive to Georgia, we get paid!!! But that’s probably another story! I did write a song about it for the new album. lol
But The songs themselves are really where all of this comes together. Lyrically, I’m writing about love, family, memories, culture, food, places and the little everyday moments that end up meaning the most. Some songs are playful and flirtatious, some are nostalgic and some are deeply personal, but they all come from a very real place. I’ve even written about actual recipes!
One song that captures that direction is “Agua de Florida.” It comes directly from a memory of my grandmother. Every time we would visit her house, she would splash us with Agua de Florida as a kind of spiritual cleansing. It was one of those little family rituals that felt completely normal to us growing up, but as an adult I understand it differently…as part of the culture, beliefs and traditions she was passing down. That memory stayed with me, and the song became a way of preserving it.
I’m also really excited that this month Crescendo Amelia Big Band is debuting two of my originals, “Stir the Pot” and “Sit at My Table,” both bilingual cha-chas that lean into food, flirtation, rhythm and storytelling. I’m especially grateful to Dennis Negrin for giving me the space to bring my original music into the Crescendo Amelia Big Band world. Hearing those songs interpreted by a big band has been incredibly meaningful and has opened up another creative lane for me. “Stir the Pot” came from one of those very ordinary moments that somehow turns into a song. One of my dad’s favorite Celia Cruz songs was “Le Pongo Sazón,” and that idea of seasoning life, food and love has always stuck with me. At home, I’m constantly asking my husband, “Papi…you hungry?” At this point, it’s practically a ritual. And that’s how the song starts! Food is how I love people, how I take care of them and, apparently, how I write songs!
That everyday exchange became the seed for “Stir the Pot.” and even “Sit at My Table”…It’s playful, flirtatious and built around the idea that cooking and attraction can speak the same language…a little heat, a little flavor and a whole lot of rhythm. Musically, it gave me a chance to pull from the Latin music I grew up around while still making the song feel completely like me. In a way, it carries a little piece of my dad, a little piece of my marriage and a whole lot of the way I naturally tell stories.
Meanwhile, the new Black Cat Bones show will also reflect all of this visually and rhythmically. You’ll hear and see much more of my Puerto Rican roots onstage which includes bomba y plena rhythms, more Latin percussion, more movement and a lot more dancing woven into the performance. I don’t want Southern Bugalú to be something people only understand by reading a description of it. I want them to feel it in the room and in the drums, the horns, the grooves, the stories and in the way the whole band moves together.
And I have to say something about my bandmates, because none of this exists without them. We’ve been together for years, through different seasons, different stages, COVID, changes in the industry and all the reinvention that came with it. They stayed with me through all of it. The trust, instinct and chemistry that come from playing together for years can’t really be manufactured, and Southern Bugalú is as much a result of that long musical relationship as it is anything I’ve written on paper.
What I’m probably most known for is the live show. I love connecting with an audience, and I’ve always believed a performance should feel like an experience, not just a collection of songs. I want people dancing, laughing, singing, feeling something and walking away remembering the night. And where AI is dominating the arts, I’m not worried about it…come to my show and you will see AND HEAR what’s real. AI can only do so much…HUMANS will be tested once they hit those stages.
What sets the Black Cat Bones apart is that we’ve never fit neatly into one genre, and I’ve finally stopped trying to make us fit. For years, I think I was searching for the right way to describe what we were doing. Southern Bugalú finally gave me language for something we had already been building for more than a decade.
What I’m most proud of is that the project has continued to evolve without losing its roots. We’re not trying to sound like whatever is popular right now. We’re taking everything we’ve lived, listened to, inherited, performed and learned and turning it into something that feels completely our own.
That’s the work I’m most excited about now.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I was always an entertainer. I had lots of friends, but my sisters and my 50 cousins were really my best friends. Believe it or not, I was also very shy…unless I was on a stage. I’m also one of the most clumsy people on this planet and a total bull in a China cabinet…UNLESS I’m on a stage. I say seriously stupid things and don’t mean to…unless I’m on a stage! Well scratch that…I still say stupid things on a stage…but I sure don’t sing them! I may have been a little bossy…I’m REALLY bossy on stage…lol…My mom always said I lived in a world of my own, and my dad said I was loyal to a fault and a very funny kid. Both of my parents also said I was moody, so yeah…pretty much a total artist from birth. Oh and I LOVE animals. From birds to cats, dogs and hamsters, they were always among me and my husband cringes anytime I break out a ladder and a hammer because I LOVE DIY projects!😂
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.oae904.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimvibes25/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/krbcb/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq2YJeNWJihMIPUYRL-odbA/videos
