- Eliot Bronson and Paul Iwancio of the Baltimore Songwriters Association

Catie: Well, I was in a show in my hometown at the amusement park. And when the show was over, there was a yard-sale at the home of most of the actors in the show. It was a dramatic presentation and I was playing the drums. It was a traveling band of actors that settled in this town in Maine, just to do this show. And there was a yard-sale, and one of them was selling an old Yamaha guitar. And I said "oh, how much for the guitar?" She looked at me and she said, "If you'll play it, you can have it." I was fifteen. So, for the first few months I didn't play it that much. I felt guilty, you know 'cause I said I would play it. Then after that I started playing it, and within a year I was playing covers in the local coffee shop.

Eliot: How long before you started writing your own songs?

Catie: A couple years later. But, I didn't write anything that I'd perform, I don't think, until was in my twenties.

Eliot: Do you still play percussion?

Catie: Yea, I just played a gig with Jimmy Ryan, he's my mandolin player. He played upright bass and I played drums and Kris Delmhorst played fiddle and this other guy played guitar. And we called it Fritter and we did just the songs of Hank and Lucinda Williams. So, we did a set at this club in Boston as Fritter where I was the drummer.

Eliot: Awesome, that's very cool.

Catie: We're thinking of doing other gigs where we use other themes.

Eliot: Can you describe your songwriting process?

Catie: Sure, i guess it's different all the time. Mostly I just need to sit down in a room with my guitar, which sounds so simply, but its so hard to get there. You know, I travel a lot and I need to have time off the road to write. So, once I get writing I really try and put five to eight hours a day in my room with a guitar to really try and come up with stuff that feels interesting enough to me to keep it. Just in the last year I've started working with a mini-disc recorder. If I'm on to an idea sometimes I'll record it. But, prior to that I never recorded anything, just figuring that if it was good it would stick with me. In a way I feel like the mini-disc is encouraging a lack of focus, because I can do a little of this, a little of that and keep it all on tape. I'm not sure if its really a good thing or not. But, anyway its just important for me to be alone. I'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write. Although, this year I went to Nashville and I wrote once a day with a different person for a week and everytime we wrote something.

Eliot: Everyday!?

Catie: Yea. But, I only really did it for three days. So, everyday for three days I wrote a songs. All with people who'd written a lot of stuff in Nashville. And that was pretty cool, and the songs I think are good songs, but so far I don't play them at my show because they feel like they could be for anybody. You know, they don't feel...

Eliot: They're not necessarily your songs?

Catie: Yea, they feel more... [long pause] open... there's something about them that feels like.

Eliot: Kinda removed from you?

Catie: Yea, a little distant from me, or something like that. I think its possible to co-write and have it feel real important to play. I have had songs that I co-wrote that I play now.

Eliot: Like The Wolf.

Catie: A song called The Wolf yea, but I wrote that with someone who works with kids, who helped me with the lyrics. It wasn't a musician who writes songs. She gave me these images and I was like, "well you're the co-writer, because that was a really amazing idea for the song." But, mostly I have to be alone. Just play and sing and play and sing. And on a parallel track I'm also frequently writing in my journal. And when I'm on the road I get some ideas for songs. But, when I'm on the road the lyrics don't come that much to me either, because I'm just busy and I'm not really in creative mode. I'm in performer mode. And it's not as easy for me to just notice everything because I'm really just trying to keep my head above water. It's just hard to really process anything.

Eliot: I just interviewed Susan Werner and she said she would unplug the phone in the morning and say, "Ok, I'm going to write until three." And if she talked to anybody she'd come out of that spell. Does that sound familiar?

Catie: Yea, I a lot of times I let myself go do the email or talk on the phone, and it's probably not a great thing, because I do get really distracted. I'm about to enter, after this weekend, I'm about to enter a whole month at home. And I need to really unplug the phone and get creative. It's really cool when you do get in that zone, then you don't even notice the time. Like, once you get the song going, oh my God, you can get so lost, like time is nothing. Other times your sitting there the clock is barely moving and you feel like getting up, and you're like, "don't get up." You do have to tell yourself, "I'm going to sit here for a while," because it takes a while just sitting there until you get in the zone. And if you don't allow yourself to get in the zone, and you keep getting interrupted then its really hard to come up with anything.

Eliot: I think I read somewhere that you play keyboard too?

Catie: A little bit.

Eliot: Do you write on the keyboard at all?

Catie: Yea, I wrote Magnolia Street on the keyboard. And I've written other stuff, but I'm just not as good at it, so it's hard. It's hard to write anything fast.

Eliot: Do you write on the keyboard and then learn it on the guitar?

Catie: Yea, usually. Actually in my process, frequently come to think of it, I'll start a song on one or the other and I'll switch back and forth between the two while I'm writing it. Just kind of allowing it to take different shapes. Sometimes I'll move it forward by switching back and forth.

Eliot: Would you agree that your songwriting has changed a lot since Truth from lies?

Catie: I was just listening back to this demo that I made after Truth From Lies, of all songs that didn't make the next record. It was like twelve songs that I was ready to record after Truth From Lies, that I never recorded and I went on and wrote more songs. I had a lot of time in there. I recorded Truth From Lies in '93 or '94 it came out in '94 and then also in '96. Then I made the next one, I can't remember... but, it came out in '97. So, I had a good three years in there to be writing. And I think there was this transitional batch of songs that were really quiet, more like truth from lies. And very introspective and ballad-like and kind of sweet. But, you know what, I wasn't enjoying playing them live that much because I was developing a hunger for songs that had a little bit more of a punchy energy to them and so I started writing stuff that felt more like what I wanted to be performing and as I was writing those songs, that whole other batch of songs sort of feel to the bottom of the list because I just like, "these aren't as fun to play live." Its funny to go back and listen, its a demo like 1995, and I actually though, "well, there are some good songs on here. How come I never recorded them?" But, it was just that I felt like I wanted to pick up the tempos a little bit, and the energy a little bit. And I'm totally unobjective, I can't tell if they are really good songs or not. I think its true that, if it seems like I skipped a step between Truth From Lies and the next record, its probably because its that demo.

Eliot: I'd like to hear that.

Catie: It would have been that in-between record.

Eliot: Does the fact that you have more resources to produce albums the way you want to, effect the way you write songs now?

Catie: I think it's more that I have the resources to bring a band on the road. Because I really enjoyed, in the last year, I started having Billy Conway on the road with me sometimes and always Jimmy. So like, a four piece sometimes five piece. It's an amazing feeling to really get a grove going onstage. And it's something that I think, in terms of the energy that goes back and forth between me and the audience, having a funky groove or that kind of energy, it just gives me more joy I guess, then playing ballad after ballad. I like to play ballads now and then, but there's just some way that I want to affirm over and over, "I'm breathing, I'm kicking, you know, I'm really taking up space!" I tend to be a pretty mellow person and it's sort of relaxing and easy for me to play ballads. But, It feels important to me to push that line a little bit.

Paul: You keep on changing producers for you various CDs. Was that because you were searching for a certain sound?

Catie: I just always want a new producer. I'm going to have a new producer on the next one. Because I'm the same person, and I feel like, I know I'm going to bring to it a certain sensibility that's me, and I want to have something different coming out on each album. And it's nothing against anybody I've worked with. Each time I've worked with someone I've had a really different kind of experience. You know, their personality and who they want to bring in. Fortunately, having the experience of working with Darleen for two records... she's a very collaborative type of person and I think she really tought me how to produce a record. I learned it from her, so even when I go in there and I'm working with the producer, we're co-producing. We're always working collaboratively so It's never just that someone comes and puts their thing on me.

Paul: I've found, on a lot of your songs, you're almost a master of near rhymes. Is that done consciously?

Catie: I feel like it's more important for me to try and say what I want to say than to have the perfect rhyme. In my order or priority, I'd much rather say what I want to say. But, I also feel like, it intuitively has to make sense. It has to feel good. The sound of it has to feel good.

Eliot: Some of your early work, I've heard just a little of, and from just glimmers of things in your later work, It's kind of clear that you have some social consciousness, but it's mostly personal stuff. I was wondering, what you feel the role of social consciousness is in music is, if there is one?

Catie: Well, I have actually found in just the last year of two that... well, no I guess I've always known this. That when you do have songs where you're going to say something, some kind of statement about cultural or social stuff, that in general people love it. People love to be challenged in that way. The people that I want to come to my shows are in to it. So, I feel encouraged to do it. But, I don't want to do it just for effect. I don't want to be like, "oh, they love it so I'm going to do that more." But, on the other hand I like to write about social and cultural stuff that's not about like, who to vote for, but more about revealing a process and trying to sort things out in my heart and in my mind. And trying to just encourage that in people.

Eliot: Bring it down to the personal level.

Catie: Yea, because I'm not really. I don't think it's in my personality to be a real rallier. I don't think it's my place to say, "come with me. You should think like this" I think that's just as bad as any other kind of rhetoric. I just feel like, I don't want my music to be about rhetoric at all. There is one song that I'll play tonight that I just wrote a few weeks ago, that's just kind of about trying to understand why this certain church burned down. A church I used to go to in Maine accidentally burned down. Sort of understanding why such a thing happened. So, about faith and stuff like that. I just feel like, in a way that's sort of social commentary. It's spiritual. There's hardly any place to turn anymore to think about spiritual stuff. I remember Dar [Williams] saying to me, a few years ago, "you know, the government has totally dropped the ball, in terms of leadership on political issues, so musicians need to do it" And I kinda feel like, I agree with that, but that the church and temple have dropped the ball, in terms of, being there for people to question, and decide how they feel. So, I feel that musicians need to do that to; sort of address, "what do you believe? What to do care about?" I think that's kind of for me, where the meat of social commentary. That's what I want to write about, besides, for me its really important to write about love all the time.

My Shirt Looks Good on You Catie Curtis Listen to Samples Price$13.45

Crash Course in Roses Catie Curtis Listen to Samples Price$13.99

Catie Curtis Catie Curtis Listen to Samples Price: $13.99

Truth From Lies Catie Curtis Listen to Samples Price: $11.97