About Us: We’re Jack and Kitty!

Travel Experts from Minnesota Sharing the Best of the Midwest

Hi, we’re Jack and Kitty!

We have traveled and lived all around the world, yet we ADORE the Midwest. So much so, that we’ve chosen to make Minnesota our full-time residence. We want to show you the hidden gems of this amazing area, and why the Midwest rivals some of the best vacation spots in the world. We’ll show you how to be a pro at experiencing the best of the Midwest!

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 Midwest 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 plan on writing a lot of 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.

We moved back to Minnesota and are now settled in Winona, our favorite city in Minnesota. 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! Winona is a weird, artsy college town located on the shores of the Mississippi River. We’re using our home in Winona as a place to build our travel business and as a good launching place for our continued travels.

By the way, if you’re a foodie seeking unforgettable dining, these are Winona, Minnesota’s best restaurants.

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 pulls at our heartstrings. We keep coming back to the Midwest…and now our goal is clear: to share our love for the area, helping fellow travelers and visitors discover the best of the Midwest!

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 Midwest exploration forms the basis for our Midwest travel blog and series of best-selling guidebooks.

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 become the Best Midwest Travel Blog in the world.

Like we said earlier, we have traveled and lived all around the world, yet we ADORE the Midwest. So much so, that we’ve chosen to make Minnesota our full-time residence. We want to show you the hidden gems of this amazing area, and why the Midwest rivals some of the best vacation spots in the world. We’ll show you how to be a pro at experiencing the best of the midwest! This all starts with our travel blog. We post new articles almost every day.

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

Here’s how you can search the blog by destination:
https://jackandkitty.com/destinations-travel-blog-articles

Travel Videos

We love making videos. We have spent nearly two decades working in the film and television industry. We are now humble baby YouTubers, slowly growing our YouTube channel: Travel with Jack and Kitty.

The goal of our channel is to use video to help illuminate our blog articles. It’s fun to add video tours within our posts so you can experience cool places and fun things to do in the Midwest.

Here’s how to watch our travel videos (be sure to subscribe):
https://www.youtube.com/c/JackAndKitty

Travel Podcast

Ok, so we love blogging and making videos but the most fun we have all week is when we sit down and record a podcast episode. It’s so much fun! Hopefully you’ll be able to get a feel for how much fun we’re having.

We want our travel podcast to be like no other: funny, helpful, quirky, insightful. We occasionally interview special guests, but mostly we’re just sharing what’s best in the midwest and Kitty’s laughing at Jack’s bad dad jokes.

The other day, we got an email from a listener saying our show was like if “Click & Clack’s Car Talk was about travel or if Rick Steves and Samantha Brown were being extra goofy and had silly Minnesota accents!”

We couldn’t have said it any better ourselves.

Here’s how to listen to our travel podcast:
https://jackandkitty.com/podcast

Travel Guidebooks

We have spent a lifetime traveling the globe…but we really love exploring the Midwest. We even settled down in Minnesota. Now, we’ve taken our decades of experience and are presenting a series of affordable and helpful guidebooks. These simple books offer the absolute best of the Midwest.

Thankfully, reader response has been incredible. Our Iowa travel guidebook and our Wisconsin travel guidebook both became Amazon Best Sellers! Our Minnesota travel guidebook is also available on Amazon.

What’s Coming Up

We are currently developing a television series with plans on offering it to PBS member stations nationwide. 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 talking about how awesome the Midwest is and eating tater tot hotdish, so sometimes we chill out and pursue our hobbies. Ok, maybe we can spend all day eating tater tot hotdish, but on days we’re not doing that Kitty stays busy composing and releasing music. Listen to her on Spotify.

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 aliens that visited earth in the 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.

Minnesota Travel Guidebook by Local Authors

(Let’s just pretend we have a high-paid publicist who wrote this next bit in the style of a “press release” so we look all fancy and such. Let’s all agree to not think about the fact that this long about page is about to switch from 1st person to 3rd person).

Just released…our new guidebook to Minnesota!

Pack your sense of adventure (and perhaps a taste for lutefisk and tater tot hotdish) as Jack and Kitty introduce you to the very best of what Minnesota has to offer. The husband-and-wife duo affectionately celebrate the charm and uniqueness of our great state, saying a resounding “you-betcha” to every adventure contained within the book’s pages.

Behind the fun-loving “Travel with Jack and Kitty” brand – which includes a dynamic travel blog, engaging YouTube channel, and a weekly Podcast series – the couple spent a lifetime on the road as professional touring musicians. They have performed across North America, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Middle East. In response to the global pandemic, they leveraged their expertise as globetrotters to create a successful travel blog and YouTube channel, aiming to inspire others for future adventures. As the world begins to recover, they’re excited to share their new guidebook, celebrating the beauty and diversity of their home state, Minnesota.

Our “Professional” Bio

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 turned expert travelers.

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 (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 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, and is now available on Amazon.

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 travel blog and YouTube channel. By 2023, they became full-time travel bloggers, vloggers and podcasters. On “Travel with Jack and Kitty” 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 in Minnesota and the Midwest!