'DAVEY, CATHY'
'Interview (AUGUST 2004)'
- Genre: 'Indie'
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With barely a chance to draw breath between supports for the country’s brightest and best, Ireland’s Cathy Davey is quite possibly on the brink of something very special indeed. Heralbum ‘Something Ilk’ hit the shelves yesterday,and it’s contents -creamed from a stock pile - indicate only great things for the 25 year old.
Nottingham's Orange Tree is noisy so we hole up with some drinks in the band’s transit van for a girlie chat. Cathy apologises for the mess.
Did the songs feel fresh when you were in the studio for Something Ilk? I begin, expecting the usual sales talk and kicking up my feet.
"Well, no." Davey replies with unexpected bluntness. "Some of them didn’t. And we ended up recording those 2 or 3 times to try and inject them with something new. But most of the songs were fresh because, though I’d been hording for years, you want to keep going forward musically. So I chose the most recent songs; they weren’t rehashed. But there were certain songs people had great expectations of, including myself. There was quite a weight on my shoulders for them to be singles and that can take away the joy of recording."
Did any of the material work out better than expected? Or were you just so sure of what you wanted?
"Some things turned out better. You know, you have such high expectations of yourself. I just thought that I could go in and do it and be strong and know exactly what the right thing to do would be. But things always change and you kind of feel yourself losing control of your own mind and certainty."
It can be a good thing.
"Yeah, it can be a good thing," Davey draws on her cigarette. "But at the same time it’s hard to accept that you’re discovering your own limitations and that’s not a very nice thing to see because you always think that you limits are further away. It wasn’t a nice thing to see but it was a good thing to see. I know the next time I go into the studio I’ll have more confidence. But some songs - I just don’t think they are as good as they should be and that wasn’t anyone else’s fault but my own. I just couldn’t… I just crumbled with some of it. Though they sound good to other people, but just listening back to them myself…"
The weight of her own perfectionism obviously weighs hard on Cathy Davey. That could change though, I suggest .You can be unsure about something at the time and then turn around later and love it....
"‘Well, yes, I suppose, because slowly you forget all the little things that are really, really not important and begin to focus on what is, yeah."
Were there things that you could try in the studio that were new? I heard rumours about recording with studio doors wide open and music with BLENDERS? Is that right?’
"Yeah, blenders," she says straight-faced.
Pre-war mics, and old synths? Is it true that when they heat up they shift pitch?
"Everything that’s analogue changes slightly with the heat and we were recording in a heat wave. We used all those little things to keep ourselves sane I suppose. We’d be concentrating so hard, focussing for 14 hours and then at the end you just think ‘I just need to fuckin’ get a toy and play with it’. To do that, just for half an hour, it was just a nice little release."
You’ve been on the road a lot as well...
"Yeah"
And you’ve got some more coming with the 22-20s?
"Mmm, that’s a gruelling one," she says, looking out onto Nottingham’s drenched streets.
"We’ve done pretty much 40 gigs in a row at one stage. We did a headline tour in Ireland and the day after that we went to support Supergrass and the day after that we did Graham Coxon, but we had days off every 3 days. But the 22-20s, it’s two days off in a month."
Davey’s voice sinks again. "It’s going to be pretty gruelling."
Didn’t you do a date with the Twilight Singers as well?
"Yeah, at The Scala."
Greg Dulli (Twilight Singer’s frontman, and former Afghan Whig), He’s quite Irish isn’t he?
"I dunno," she says, her voice lifting with interest. "I don’t know anything about him."
I thought you’d be having a big celtic jamboree!
"No, I legged it actually. I’d had a really tough few days so I legged it after the gig. But Dulli came over to me and he said (Davey sits up and adopts bolshy American accent) “You’re the singer. AWE-some”.’ She giggles. "And I thought he was just the drummer or something, cause I thought the guitarist … cause everyone was going “Greg Dulli! He’s gorgeous” and I saw this other guitarist….."
And you thought ‘Well, Hello!’
(Laughs) "Well…no … but …"(More laughter).
Do you have the chance to be creative on the road?
"No, you don’t. It’s been really wrecking my head actually. I’m just so used to being isolated and I like it that way. This year it’s been a lot of fun and a lot of hard work and a lot of changing, changing myself I suppose. And you raise your head up and you go ‘Actually I’ve not been doing anything really that started me off in music’. I go home for a couple of days and all I have in my head is ‘I must write so I’m not left with 2 weeks to do the next album’, and so I pick up the guitar, but all that’s in my head is ‘I must write, I must write, I must write’. There’s no joy in that, there’s nothing inspirational in it."
She stirs the bag in her overlarge cup of tea.
"So that’s always in my head, and it’s a nightmare dealing with that, But,’ She says, her voice picking up ‘But I think everyone has that, that’s why it’s called the Difficult Second Album. It’s such a cliche."
But then you can go back to the rock mainstream with your 3rd record and everything’ll be fine! But what about your band. Did you gather certain people, or did you just wait to see who turned up?
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"When I signed I didn’t have any band and I didn’t know anyone that I wanted to play with.
Had you done a lot of performing?
"Not really. I was really naïve. I thought because I’d been recording at home I could just make an album and it would sell."
Madonna does it on occasion, I try to add helpfully.
"Well she’s doesn’t play a fuckin thing herself! She doesn’t even write it! So, anyway, I was introduced to Simon Tong who had heard my demos, he then introduced me to a bass player friend, Simon Jones (also previously of the Verve). I auditioned a lot of drummers; Diane was the first keyboardist who came along. The thing that I was auditioning for most of all was someone who wasn’t going to be with me for the wrong reasons, just to party or be part of a scene. I knew I was going to be stuck on the road with these people for god knows how long and I really needed support around me, I know it sounds selfish."
Not at all.
"Well I knew how fragile I was. I didn’t see myself making it this far – so it was really important to get the right people who would be good for me. Sounds awful! I can’t really believe I’m saying it."
Is it getting easier?
"It’s getting easier, once I got my head around the whole thing… Sometimes it just hits you that you’re playing on stage. Like at the V festival – the tent was full and all that was going through my head was ‘this is such a bizarre career’, these eyes on me and I’ll going ‘LA LA LA’ and they probably can’t hear the words. And what kind of a career is that? It’s very bizarre. But I suppose careers are bizarre anyway."
She goes on to say with insight that I fail to appreciate at the time: ‘"It’s not natural really, for a human being."
I’ve been thinking about Metal in a similar way. A friend of mine lent me some Pantera videos and I was watching these men effectively going ‘LA LA LA’ only in a very stylized way. Just the way Metal twists La into a very macho butch activity. Some days they must just turn around and think “All I do is sing”.
"I see what you mean," Davey says looking at me directly.
"But you know what? It is hard. You look at people and you think it’s not difficult, but the way my head’s been reacting to the whole thing over the last 2 years it’s like, Jesus, I’ve stopped slagging off people like Britney Spears – even though it’s a completely different thing – these people have so much dedication to what they do."
"I mean, I don’t have to practise dance routines for 5 hours a day on top of what I’m doing now, and it’s hard enough just taking care of your voice, and wearing high heels and playing and stomping on pedals and synchronizing everything and then making relationships work with people when it’s all so personal to everyone. Its just, urururugh! Balancing. Fuckin’ juggling! You know, it’s fuckin hard. But at the same time’ She laughs ‘why should it be so hard? When people make music just out of love for music. I always wondered if it was easier back when Rock’n’Roll started up… I don’t know."
I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve heard of your work so far. It’s obvious that you enjoy making things which look one way, but subvert themselves. Things with twists and quirks. Do you go out of your way to write like that?
"I just write like that."
What inspires you?, I ask. There’s a long thoughtful pause.
"Tri-cky one!"
‘I think some people like horror movies and some people like Rom-Com, that’s just the kind of person you are. I like things that are sinister, I always liked…’
Snow White’s Evil Queen over Snow White?...
"Yeah, like David Bowie in Labyrinth or Beetlejuice." She says with relish. "I think it’s always more attractive to have someone with something nasty going on internally. It’s always more interesting, not necessarily better," She adds.
"I also think there’s a lot more to be said than what’s on the surface. Like, someone asked me today in an interview about a line in one song about my mother and they were trying to get me to elaborate. ‘What do you mean?’ and ‘Is that true?’ and I was saying, ‘well, I’m not going to talk about it ‘cause I’ve said what I wanted to say and that’s the beauty of editing your own material."
You can be specific to the detriment of a song, I suggest.
"You can, and music is far too literal. Why should you have to articulate exactly what you are feeling if the drums can say it better than a word?"
Like her music, it’s a statement of craft that’s difficult to contradict. Cathy Davey tours the UK with the 22-20s throughout October.
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author: Sarah M
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READERS COMMENTS
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This sounded like a tricky one to do Sarah, from where the interview took place, to the bluntness of Ms Davey. I liked reading this though, it was good stuff, and gave a good insight into what Cathy is like as a person, as well as a performer. Nice one, and Thank You
------------- Author: Mabs
13 June 2006
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