About Us: Jack and Kitty Norton

Hi, we’re Jack and Kitty Norton! Thanks for visiting us. If you want our short and sweet bio, here it is:

Bio: Jack and Kitty Norton

Jack and Kitty Norton are Emmy Award-winning and best-selling authors, high school sweethearts turned married soulmates. They are the creators and editors of JackAndKitty.com, an independent news, travel, and culture blog with offices in St. Paul, Minnesota and Nashville, Tennessee. As pastors at Voices of Faith Ministries, they also host a podcast, create YouTube content, and are musicians and filmmakers. The Nortons currently split their time between Winona, Minnesota and Franklin, Tennessee and would love to have you over for some tater tot hotdish.

(Pretty fancy, huh?)

Now that we have that monkey business outta the way, we wanted to share with you a bit more about us and our journey. We love random stuff like traveling, writing, music, and living life as soulmates. So, the rest of this page will be kinda random – because our entire life has been kinda random – but here goes…

Where We’ve Lived

We have lived all over the place. We are both from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Kitty spent her childhood going between Minneapolis and Jamaica…and yes, Kitty is her real name…and yes, her uncle’s name is Bunny. No, seriously, Kitty has an uncle named Bunny. He’s a musician too! Kitty’s uncle is reggae legend Bunny Wailer from Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Jack spent his childhood in Minneapolis with Tiny Tim as his babysitter and Leon Redbone as his guitar teacher (also, seriously).

We met at an Arts High School in Golden Valley, Minnesota. We were soon best friends…quickly fell in love, becoming high school sweethearts…and realized we were soulmates.

We almost didn’t graduate from our arts high school because we were busy making art professionally (Kitty was working as a session vocalist at Prince’s Paisley Park studios in Chanhassen and Jack was touring the midwest in support of his debut album which featured musicians from Tom Waits’ and Leon Redbone’s touring bands).

Somehow we graduated. We married soon after. From there we lived all over Minnesota: in crappy apartments in Minneapolis, in an old converted barn in southern Minnesota, in a yurt in northern Minnesota. And several stops in between: Winona, Rochester, Duluth, St. Charles, Zumbrota.

We spent the next five years or so traveling all over the Midwest. We had a folksy-bluegrass-reggae duo and toured throughout Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

It was during this time that we truly fell in love with this region of the United States. Simply put: the Heartland of America is magical!

Like most good Minnesotans do, we decided to run away from the snowy winters and tried living in the Southwest. We lived in Cave Creek, Arizona (a northern suburb of Phoenix), Las Vegas, Nevada and for a few months in Los Angeles, California. We loved living as snowbirds and enjoy writing articles and guides full of tips and tricks we learned to save money, live in the sun… and avoid the cold Midwestern winters.

Eventually we left southern California for Nashville, Tennessee (as so many do). We loved living in Nashville and had tons of crazy adventures with a preschool television show we created and starred in for PBS Kids (more on that later). 

From Nashville we moved to New York City (as so many also do). We worked as caretakers for a friend who lived in a home overlooking Gramercy Park. We absolutely loved it.

We missed the Midwest so we left New York and moved back to Minneapolis to make a movie and so Kitty could go through a yoga teacher training course.

From Minneapolis we moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. We loved living in Tulsa. It has a rich culture, great art and music scene, and friendly people. In the future, we’ll be blogging a lot more about our time there.

From Tulsa we moved to Paris, France. We loved living in Paris but wanted to experience more of Europe. We did the digital nomad thing in Europe for a while, but it’s hard to build a business without having a regular home office. From France we returned to America and settled in Vermont. First outside of Brattleboro, then to Burlington.

Even though New England is gorgeous, we still missed the Midwest. Are you seeing a pattern here? Hehe! Eventually we left Vermont and moved to one of the smallest towns in North Dakota. It had a population of 20. That was fun… for a while. Hehe.

We moved back to Minnesota and settled in Winona, our favorite city in Minnesota. Winona is a weird, artsy college town located on the shores of the Mississippi River. They call it the “Miami of Minnesota”. That’s a relative term, because it’s still exceptionally cold during the winters, but I guess (like Miami) we’re southeastern and (like Miami) we’re warmer than everywhere else (in Minnesota). That means when it’s 20 degrees below zero, it’s a balmy 18 degrees below zero here in Winona. Uff-da!

Maybe because of the cold – and also because we truly love life down south – we recently started splitting our time between Minnesota and Tennessee. You just can’t beat Nashville. I guess we’re a lot like Miley Cyrus because now we’ve got the best of both worlds. (Sorry for the Hannah Montana reference! Hehe.)

Why are we telling you all this? Because we get this question a lot. And, home is any old place you hang your hat… and we’ve hung our hats more places than we can count! Hehe. Long story short: the heartland of America always pulls at our heartstrings.

Where We’ve Traveled

A better question might be: where haven’t we traveled?! Hehe. We spent nearly two decades on the road, working as professional musicians and filmmakers. These careers kept us constantly touring and traveling, and since we were indie musicians and indie filmmakers we wore many hats. What is it with us and hats on this page? LOL.

Well, anyhow, running your own film production company and indie record label means you are essentially a manager, publicist, booking agent, and – most importantly for our current travel business – tour manager.

You see, in Nashville, Jack handled logistics for our production company which included coordinating all the details for five teams of performers touring worldwide. Our Emmy Award winning kids TV series aired on over 100 PBS member stations nationwide and in 195 countries around the world. We ran five sets of global touring companies (based on characters from the show). Thousands of shows each year.

For nearly a decade. Jack became an expert at finding hotel deals, keeping cast and crew safe, coordinating logistics and making sure our global touring companies ran like a flawless machine.

Meanwhile, Kitty was kept beyond busy composing, recording and performing all music for all of the live shows as well as all albums and television series soundtracks. The skills she acquired working at some of the top recording studios in Nashville with some of the best session musicians in the world, enabled this self-taught musician to become a master communicator and exceptional songwriter. She also worked as a DJ mixing sets around the world during our live tours.

So where have we been exactly? That was the question, wasn’t it? Hehe. Well… we have traveled extensively and performed in every single state in the United States except Alaska and Maine. Before all the craziness of our TV show in Nashville, we released several singer/songwriter folk music albums and toured almost nonstop in the Midwest.

We have performed a show and/or visited every single city and town in Minnesota! No seriously, we have. Every. Single. One. That’s kinda how we’ve become experts on Minnesota. Of course, before singing for our supper (i.e. – our concerts) we’d go off and explore whatever cool new Midwestern town we were in. This time of exploration forms the basis for our travel blog and series of best-selling books.

As far as other countries go, we have traveled and performed all across Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Haiti, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Lebanon, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

When the global pandemic of 2020 hit, we realized it would be wise to stay safe and stay home…not knowing when or if we’d ever be able to perform and tour again. Thankfully, we had a wealth of travel experience under our belt and a passion for sharing our travel knowledge with friends online. So, Travel with Jack and Kitty was born. As a brand, it has taken on a life of its own and now we can’t imagine doing anything else! So what exactly are we doing for the Travel with Jack and Kitty brand? Well, let’s chat about that right now meow….

Travel Blogging

First and foremost, Travel with Jack and Kitty has one simple goal: to present honest and helpful travel information.

Like we said earlier, we have traveled and lived all around the world and we want to help you with your journeys. Unlike most travel bloggers who are more concerned with brand deals and are paid to tell you what they think, we avoid all sponsorships and affiliate marketing. That means you just get good, honest and helpful travel advice – free from corporate greed. We post new travel articles almost every day.

Here is the hub of our travel blog:
https://jackandkitty.com/destinations-travel-blog-articles/

What’s Up with News?

Jack has always been a news junkie. One of his favorite things to do is to tune in to local television broadcasts wherever we travel to get the latest scoop on news in the area. We actually think staying informed through the news is an excellent way to experience an area – and every smart traveler should be an informed traveler.

Sadly, today much of the news we consume is made by corporate fat cats and we wanted to do something a bit different with our coverage: to present real news, by real people, that is real local. To inject honesty and truth behind the headlines we assembled a team of news reporters and journalists and now we offer news articles every day of the week. Jack also has a daily podcast called NewsChat where we present a sensible take on today’s top stories.

The tagline of JackAndKitty.com is “From the Heartland to Your Heart: News, Travel, Fun!” – this really is what informs everything we do. Is it hard writing about some of the stories we report on? Of course, but news does assist travelers or those consider a move to learn more about the area covered.

What is the Jack and Kitty Media Group?

In addition to the Jack and Kitty News Network, we have an online shop, several podcast series, and two YouTube channels – Jack and Kitty and Voices of Faith. We stay pretty dang busy LOL!

What’s Voices of Faith Ministries?

We both attended Bible College and in 2024 we launched Voices of Faith Ministries, where we are both serve as ministers. As Christians, this has been a life-long dream and finally we felt the calling to start this ministry. The Lord planted the seeds in our hearts years ago, and it’s been exciting to watch this vision grow.

What’s Coming Up

We are currently developing a television series. That’s a fancy Hollywood way of saying: “we’re trying to raise money to make a TV show”. Since we are neither fancy nor are we from Hollywood, we’ll just be honest and say: we’re trying to raise money to make a TV show.

If you are a brand or business interested interested in sponsorship opportunities, please contact us today. Or if you have a rich great-uncle that just died and you don’t know how to spend all of his money, you also should contact us. However, if you are a Nigerian prince, please don’t contact us.

What’s Also Happening: Filmmaking and Music

We can’t spend every minute of every day writing news and travel articles while eating tater tot hotdish, so sometimes we chill out and pursue our other passions. Ok, maybe we can spend all day eating tater tot hotdish, but on days we’re not doing that we stay busy composing and releasing music. Wanna listen to our jams?

• Spotify – Kitty Norton (vocal)
• Spotify – Jack Norton (bluegrass/gospel)
• Spotify – Jack & Kitty (folk/family)
• Spotify – The Zinghoppers (soundtrack to our old PBS Kids series)

Did we mention Kitty wrote a best-selling memoir on her incredible weight-loss journey? Here’s a bit about her book, The Unbecoming:

Emmy Award winning artist Kitty Norton found success while still in high school as a session vocalist at Prince’s Paisley Park Studios, and was signed to a recording contract before she graduated. What looked to be a promising career in pop music was cut short by a debilitating car accident. Bedridden for over a year, the former cheerleader and model had ballooned to 515 pounds. Yes, 515 pounds! So how did this disabled, stay-at-home, self-employed, and depressed lady lose 345 pounds… completely naturally – without any gimmicks, surgeries, pills or fad diets? This raw and inspiring memoir invites readers, while giving practical steps, to have a better body and life, too!

Jack is busy making a documentary film (about an alien that visited earth in the late 1960s) which may or may not be released sometime soon… or not. Again, money. Ok, on second thought, I guess if you’re a Nigerian prince that wants to fund this film, you can contact us.

Our “Professional” Bio (or, Is Anyone Still Reading This?)

If we were famous enough to have a manager, now would be the time (and here would be the place) they would tell us to write a traditional bio. So I guess, we’ll pretend and try to be professional for a second. Here goes…

Jack and Kitty Norton are Emmy Award winning filmmakers, bestselling authors and critically acclaimed musicians.

Born with music in her blood, Kitty is the niece of reggae legend Bunny Wailer (of Bob Marley and the Wailers fame). At the age of two, she started playing piano and by three she was composing music. In her early teen years she worked as a session vocalist at Prince’s Paisley Park studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota.

Jack’s strange childhood included having oddball ukulele legend Tiny Tim as a neighbor and babysitter. After learning how to play, “Tip-Toe Through The Tulips” on a ukulele given to him by Tiny Tim, while still in high school Jack corresponded with singer Tom Waits and authors Hubert Selby, Jr. and Nick Tosches. Enigmatic blues artist Leon Redbone was Jack’s guitar teacher.

Jack and Kitty met at the Perpich Center for Arts Education in Golden Valley, Minnesota. They became best friends, and eventually – after much persuasion by Jack – they fell in love, barely graduated (Kitty was busy working as a professional musician and Jack loved to skip school), quickly got married and started traveling the world together. They criss-crossed the globe as professional musicians…eventually playing shows in 48 of the 50 United States (sorry, Alaska and Maine) and all across Canada, Europe and the Middle East.

In addition to working as musicians, they have always had a love for photography and filmmaking. As co-founders of Jack and Kitty Media Group (a US based production company), their corporate video production clients have included: the Pentagon (US Department of Defense), MTV, Disney Channel, Interscope, Island-Def Jam, KidzBop, Sony, Whole Foods and Justin Bieber.

The duo co-created, co-directed, co-wrote and co-starred in The Zinghoppers Show, a children’s television series which earned six regional Emmy Award nominations and was broadcast on over 150 PBS member stations nationwide and in 175 countries on the AFN Family Channel and on Trinity Broadcast Network. The show was produced and filmed at Nashville Public Television.

Jack and Kitty’s 2015 feature length documentary film Jug Band Hokum includes appearances by disgraced Minnesota humorist Garrison Keillor, blues legend Charlie Parr and Grammy winning rappers Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. The film had a successful run at major film festivals and independent cinemas around the world.

In addition to their work in film, Jack and Kitty continued performing and have opened shows for Norah Jones, Dave Van Ronk, Leon Redbone and the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Recently the duo performed in 19 countries for the US Pentagon, entertaining military families in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Jack and Kitty have performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC and at the legendary Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, Tennessee.

Although Jack prefers life behind the camera, his acting work includes credited roles opposite Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern in Wilson and an unfortunate stint as a prisoner in the Tom Six cult horror film The Human Centipede III. In 2017, four original songs written and performed by Jack and Kitty were featured in the Oscar nominated Willem Dafoe film The Florida Project by director Sean Baker (Tangerine) which debuted at the 49th edition of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight as part of the Cannes Film Festival.

Sean Baker had previously worked with Kitty – including her original songs and compositions in Snowbird, his fashion film for Kenzo which stars supermodel Abbey Lee.

During the start of the global pandemic of 2020, Jack and Kitty were forced to cancel nearly 250 scheduled concert performances. Being grounded from a world tour inspired them in an unexpected way: they utilized their nearly two decades of constant travel to start a blog and YouTube channel. By 2023, they became full-time travel bloggers, vloggers and podcasters. They share tips and tricks, stories and insights from their lives spent on the road. Recently highlights include interviewing Miss America (Grace Stanke) and Miss Minnesota (Rachel Evangelisto).

Today, Kitty writes most of the blog articles and video scripts. Jack tells bad jokes and hosts most videos. The duo still travels – but now with a purpose: to bring you insightful, helpful and friendly travel advice along with today’s top news stories.