Interview - Catherine Feeny

Another hurried phone interview, this time with Catherine Feeny, a charming songstress from California.

Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in August 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd

CATHERINE FEENY

We took some time out of our busy office life (listening to the radio, eating cakes, making tea etc) to ring Catherine Feeny.

The originally-from-California-but-now-based-in-Norfolk singer and songwriter (think Feist or Edie Brickell perhaps) is set to release ‘Mr Blue’ over here. You might have already heard it on The OC, or hid from the rain at Glastonbury while Catherine was singing delicately onstage. It’s mid-morning and she’s been up a while already, having taken the train down to London first thing.

We start off with the old traditional random questions – five things she always carries with her. Catherine chooses her mobile phone, a book, bottle of water, af diary/calendar, and a pen. “It’s boring!” she laughs. What are you reading at the moment? “What is it called… hold on it’s in my bag I’ll just have a look.” There’s a bit of rummaging. “It’s called ‘Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close’, it’s written by Jonathan Safran Foer. I really loved the other book he wrote.”
We also establish that under her bed are several guitars and even more dust bunnies. Then sadly it’s time for some sensible questions. What inspired you to take up music as a career, Catherine?

“Well I always loved music. I sang from a very young age, my parents had lots of records that we would kind of listen to round the house. I think I’d been singing from age four but as I got a bit older I started to realise that I really wanted to write songs, and so when I was about 12 or 13 I started playing guitar and experimenting with playing my own stuff. I think it was a combination of my parents loving music and I had an uncle who was a singer songwriter, and that was quite inspiring."

Did you do many performances when you were young as well? “Oh yeah I always sang in school shows. At family parties I would always sing. My earliest one I would sing was ‘9 To 5’, that Dolly Parton song, which I really loved for some reason.”

Catherine says her parents’ records - Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens and Sixties folk – were a big influence on her style. “I got into Joni Mitchell a bit later, she’s been a big influence. But I also really love bands like The Cure, The Smiths, Sinead O’Connor and Blondie.” When she was Mini Catherine, someone made a mix tape for her sister which included all those acts as well as the Violent Femmes and Depeche Mode.

Can you tell us a bit about Glastonbury? we ask, jumping topics slightly. "I went along on Thursday and my show was on Saturday so I had a few days to settle in, take in the mood… and the mud, but it was really fun. It was really cool. It’s quite a uniquely British thing, the festival and everybody camping.

“I left my bag, my wallet and stuff at one of the stalls after I bought something and I didn’t notice until about ten minutes later. I ran back through the mud and it was still sitting right there. I know a couple of other people who had exactly the same experience. It just seems like a community experience, which is nice.”

How did your actual show go? “Oh it was great, it was really fun. We were playing in the Acoustic Tent and there were lots of people in there – actually it started to rain right before our set so even more people kind of piled in! Everyone was really receptive so it was cool.”

Catherine tells us she’s looking forward to her August/September tour. “It’s my first headline tour in the UK so I’m really excited. I get to take my whole band and a couple of support acts are coming on the road as well, so it’ll be really fun.” Support comes courtesy of fellow Californian Jacob Golden and the brilliantly named Challenge Of Feral Green.

“It’ll be nice to be at the Glee Club and it’ll be nice to be at The Sage. I’ve played at those places before but each night kind of has a mood and a magic of its own, so I look forward to the experience of each one.”

Have you played many tours in the States? “Not too many. The States is so big it’s really hard to spread out there unless you have some serious backing. I’ve played a lot in California in LA and surrounding areas and San Francisco, and then a bit in kind of the Midwest and Chicago and Cleveland, and then the east coast of Philadelphia and New York.”

Sounds very glamorous. And now you’re in Norfolk, we say, and she laughs. Catherine’s enjoying England (which is just as well as she can’t pop back home that fast). “I love the countryside, I love how you can just go a few minutes from a city centre and be like in a field. It seems like when you’re in a city in the States you have to drive through about ten miles of strip malls before you get any kind of pastoral scenes. England has done a really good job of preserving green space.”

There’s some nice countryside up in Norfolk isn’t there. Have you been sightseeing much? “Well I’ve been here for a while now so I’ve seen the main sights but I always love to get to new beaches, trying to see which one I like the best.”

Onto her new single ‘Mr Blue’ which was described by the Sunday Times as ‘all spectral piano, funereal brass and solicitous lyrics.’ Catherine hasn’t seen the episode of The OC it appeared on but is aiming to get hold of a DVD so she can check it out. The song itself is about: “I was dating a singer/songwriter at the time when I wrote it and we were both kind of - because we’re songwriters - kind of self-obsessed and moody. It’s about that.”

‘Mr Blue’ is from her second album ‘Hurricane Glass’. A hurricane what now?

“There’s a drink called a hurricane which I think comes from New Orleans. I’ll have to look into it and find out the history whether the drink is named after the glass or the glass is named after the drink.” (We’ve done it for her – apparently the drink was invented to use up rum supplies and was originally poured in a hurricane lamp shaped glass and given to sailors - Booze Ed)

Why did you name your album that, were you drinking a lot at the time? Catherine laughs. “I just liked the kind of opposing images. The violence and power of hurricane and then the fragility of glass. I had been in a bar and gotten a drink that was in one of these glasses and just wrote down the name ‘cause I liked it. When I was writing a song a few days later I came back to that page in my notebook and thought ‘oh yeah...’”

‘Hurricane Glass’ (as in the album) came out in 2006 through indie label Tallgrass before being snapped up by EMI this year. “I think I noticed some themes [running through the record]. I didn’t think of them while I was making or writing the album but I noticed when it was finished there’s a lot of lyrics that are about telling the truth versus lying. It’s kind of being honest with yourself and being honest with other people, and I think that’s something that I struggle with sometimes, whether to be kind to someone and lie to them or whether to just be brutally honest.”

Time to go. Hope we haven’t bored you too much we say, and Catherine says no we haven’t. We’re hoping she’s not fibbing...

'Mr Blue' is released on August 27th through Tallgrass/Charisma.

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