maine native Catie Curtis is the quintessential new kid on the block despite the fact that she s got a decade of recording under her belt.
She toured with Mary Chapin Carpenter late last year to rounded applause. She stilled the Olympia with her funky demeanour and lyrical six shooters back in November, and now she s back headlining her own shows this time round.
With her third album, A Crash Course In Roses, recently released, and her back catalogue now available through Rykodisc, Catie Curtis is beginning to smell those blooms that proved so elusive in the past. Which is not to say that she s been lounging in the back room all this time.
I think it s important to make a distinction between mainstream success and success on an alternative level, in a parallel universe, she laughs, because I have success, playing venues that I like. I really enjoy that, and I have my fan base, and I m able to make records and tour with a band frequently, and to me that s really where I want to be.
Although she s tasted of the stadium rock venues favoured by the Lilith Fair tour (playing alongside the likes of Sarah McLachlan, Natalie Merchant and Beth Orton), Curtis is under no illusions about the quotidian realities of the singer/songwriter career path.
Although you see Sarah McLachlan and Paula Cole breaking through into the mainstream, she offers, that s not the norm. And singer/songwriters that I know are operating on the same level as me. My favourite ones, like Gillian Welch and Dar Williams, do really well in the US, but they aren t well known at all. Still, they re known by their own audiences.
Curtis homeplace might not have fuelled her musical spirit, but she might have felt its influence in other ways.
There s a storyteller tradition in Maine, she declares, and there s a very wry, self-deprecating sense of humour there, but as far as music goes, I didn t really learn too much until I went to college.
Curtis is brave (or foolhardy) enough to admit to the fact that her first concert outing was to see Journey. It s hardly a reflection of a great musical heritage, but then again, everybody s got to start somewhere.
Yeah, she laughs, and I even sang back-up for Foreigner once!
Curtis song writing has never pulled any punches, with a lyrical sensibility that s refreshingly straight up. With a Gay and Lesbian American Music Award under her belt, Curtis has tackled the rarely mentioned topic of lesbian relationships with a rare delicacy.
In Radical , (from her earlier album, Truth From Lies) she sings of the personal ties that bind, colouring and shading a personal tale with what is ultimately a universal reality: that of rejection and stigmatisation.
Radical can be interpreted as a song about being in an inter-racial relationship or any kind of relationship that people might not accept, she suggests. Whereas with What s The Matter (on A Crash Course In Roses), I yell out in the bridge: What if I am Black or Jew/Straight or queer mother of two I feel like that s a graduated version of Radical . Then, on my self-titled album, I have a song called I Don t Cry Anymore , which is a song about two women who get thrown out of their school for being gay. They drove across the country and one of em chickened out and moved back, and the other one went on and lived her life. So there s a definite thread running through those three songs.
Ultimately though, gender issues might inform her writing, but she s adamant they won t dictate what she sings about.
I d like to think that I try in my writing to move from the particular to the universal, she offers. all in one song, if I m lucky. I used to be more concerned with my own personal heartache in my earlier songs, but I find that, now, it s not a matter of avoiding politics or any particular subjects, it s more that I want to write songs that can really speak to people.
Labels aren t a factor in defining what Catie Curtis is these days, although she s sure not to shy away from them either.
I don t think that being a lesbian is a key factor in defining me as an artist, she surmises, but on the other hand if I write a song and that word comes up for me, at least for the word queer , I didn t want to edit it out. Actually I ve been told since, that using that word in the song was part of the reason why it wasn t released as a single in the US, whereas it was a Top 40 single in Holland. So it might be a problem for the people marketing me but I don t give a shit!
Catie Curtis plays Whelan s of Wexford St. on Monday, March 20th.