Tik Tok star Olive Klug hits road pursuing enduring music career

Published 1:00 am Tuesday, July 29, 2025

When musicians hop on the phone for an interview with GO!, they’re usually either at their home or they’re hurtling down a highway toward their next show.

Or in the case of Olive Klug, they’re … both.

Klug, 28, is a fast-rising singer-songwriter originally from the Portland area who amassed a large following on Tik Tok thanks to their catchy, honest indie-folk songs, then moved to Los Angeles and Nashville before deciding to buy a van and make it their full-time home.

“I have a really, really full year of touring (and) I wasn’t super happy with my housing situation,” Klug said. “I’ve always had a desire to try the van life and I felt like the stars were aligning for me to just do this thing I’ve always wanted to do. So that’s what I’m doing.”

Klug is speaking from the back of that van as it rolls through Montana on the way to the Calgary Folk Music Festival. Their dad is driving, and it’s raining really hard.

“This is the first time, I think, that he has ever accompanied me on tour,” they said.

That tour will bring Klug to Bend on Tuesday for a concert at the courtyard outside Volcanic Theatre Pub. Ahead of that show, we caught up with Klug for a conversation about going viral and figuring out how to convert that virality into an enduring music career. Here’s an excerpt of that conversation, edited for space and clarity.

GO!: You’re originally from Portland, right? When did you leave and why?

OK: I’m from right outside Portland — a town called West Linn. I’d moved back after college and I wasn’t really planning on staying in Portland for that long, and then the pandemic happened. But in 2021, I was having a viral moment in my career, so I decided to head down to L.A. and try to do that whole thing of pursuing a music career.

GO!: Was that viral moment on Tik Tok?

OK: Yeah, I was on Tik Tok in 2020 and 2021, and I think that was just the time to be there, before musicians were kind of using it as their personal advertisement center, which is what it is now in many ways. Back then, it was more like we were all lonely and just, like, sitting around.

I was writing my songs, and then I got let go from a job, so I just poured all my time into writing and posting songs online. And it felt like I was there at the right time. I needed the community online as much as they needed me. It was a really mutual experience of being able to connect to people through music.

(Editor’s note: These days, Klug has nearly 200,000 followers on Tik Tok, where their videos have earned around 3.6 million likes. Their stardom there led to surges on other platforms; Klug has more than 100,000 followers on Instagram and more than 20 million Spotify streams.)

GO!: What was the viral hit where you felt like you might be able to make music as a career?

OK: That was “Raining In June.” It’s about growing up in Oregon and my relationship to the rain here in Oregon. That’s when I started getting emails from music industry people and I didn’t know anything about the music industry, so I totally freaked out. I was like, “What do I do?” But it was exciting at the same time.

I had very lofty ideas when I started getting those emails. I was like, “This is my big break. I’m going to be doing this forever.” But along the way, I’ve learned that there’s a lot more nuance in the journey. It’s not just that you made it or you didn’t make it.

GO!: When you started posting your songs to Tik Tok, did you believe they could be relatable to a lot of people? Or were you surprised by the reaction?

OK: I was surprised by the reaction. I’ve always known that I have, like, a nice voice, and that I’m a good singer. But I think the reaction to my songwriting was what surprised me. I would just write these songs to parse through my own feelings, and to have so many people relate was very validating. But yeah, I was very surprised by that.

GO!: One reason I think people like your songs is because of the way you write about your emotions and experiences in a way that makes them feel totally universal. You have a way of translating complicated feelings into pretty simple terms. Can you pinpoint where you figured out how to do that? Because it’s not easy.

OK: Thank you! I mean, I’m just writing what I know. And I think the people who inspired me are all kind of mixed up together in my own songwriting. Like Joni Mitchell — she’s probably my favorite songwriter, and she writes in a way that’s very poetic, yet very relatable. I think being obsessed with her for my entire life has really affected the way that I write.

Or I really love Kimya Dawson and that whole folk-punk, anti-folk movement. I feel like so much of that music is about making people feel seen and not about how perfect the music is. It’s more about saying, “This is my feeling, and I wonder if you feel the same way?”

Olive Klug, with Moe Reen: 6 p.m. Tuesday, doors open 5 p.m., $18 in advance, $25 at the door, Volcanic Theatre Pub (outside in the courtyard), 70 SW Century Drive, Bend, volcanictheatre.com.