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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Cat Power
Wednesday 16 April @ 13:31:51 |
 by Celeste Tabora
I was nervous before I went in to chat with Chan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power. “She’s not going to be scared of me or walk out, is she?” I asked her permanently-pleasant publicist. He assured me that I was being silly, and that she is one of the nicest people I will ever meet. Still, I thought, this is a woman with a reputation.
See, those who know Miss Marshall tend to view her as an over-apologetic wallflower, often recoiling from social interaction; those who only know her public persona, Cat Power, tend to see her as a volcanic, unpredictable personality. Chan (pronounced “Shawn,” short for Charlyn) can be a bashful, repentant, and shy young woman. But she also has a history of being unpredictable and erratic in public, sometimes storming off the stage midiset in scary freak-out mode.
Set to meet her at a loud and smoky bar in SoHo, I walked in and cautiously sat down, feeling out the surroundings. I knew this was Chan’s third day of interviews in New York, and that I was her last one of the day. She had to be exhausted, and was probably ready to reinforce any negative stereotypes I had come across; still, I wanted Chan to prove them wrong. I wanted her to be unreserved, confident and forthcoming.
I spotted Chan sitting against the wall, her bangs almost hiding her eyes, the rest of her long hair shielding her from her surroundings—a sort of visual analogue of her disposition. But her smile was welcoming, her demeanor curious. After introductions and a clumsy handshake, I drew my tape recorder out of my bag. Her eyes were pinned on it like it was a sharp knife, something I would eventually use to harm her. Other interviews with Chan that I’d read had prepared me for this.
Chan begins to explain her reaction by stuttering a half-sentence. I reassure her that her reaction is understood while gesturing towards the intimidating device on the table, innocently propped up in between the jar full of sugar and the neglected tin of cream. She groans, saying that she always forgets that this is part of the interview process. As she lets her last sentence trail off, it is clear that neither of us feels quite at ease at this point. Fearing that I’m imposing on her, I begin to think about how I can get her interested in talking.
“You know what?” I say, revealing a little part of myself in hopes of breaking the ice, “Right now I’m going through this interviewing-is-trivial phase. I think it’s ridiculous to ask people questions about their lives and where their art comes from, when all you should do is appreciate their art form for what it is.”
Chan’s eyes widen and a smile follows. “I like that,” she says, agreeing with my statement and immediately looking more comfortable. “But,” she says, “the artist is the public, because everybody does something so special. And maybe it’s not special, but everybody does something.” She seemed to have prepared herself to get into the interview once again. All of a sudden she is smiling, a warm southern-girl smile. Really there can be no answer to most interview questions, she says, since the people doing the creating often times can’t explain why they’re doing it.
I nod in agreement.
“I wish there were more people like you,” she says, quite sincerely. I can tell she’s aware that these interviews are a necessary evil, clearly not her favorite pastime.
“How many interviews have you done this week?”
“I don’t know… It’s not that bad. It’s pretty bad, but… It’s not that bad. It’s not that bad, It’s not that bad…” she repeats that phrase like a broken record, as if she wants to remember or convince herself of this.
“Like you’re saying… It gets hard to like…”
“It loses its meaning after you’ve said it a million times?” I offer, trying to finish the thought.
“Or it never gets said. It keeps on—” she makes a circular motion with her hands, symbolizing what I take as a perpetual motion with no resolve. “You know?”
“I do! That’s why I want you to say whatever you want to say.”
“I don’t know what to say!” she laughs.
In an effort to not lose the flow of our conversation, I try ask how long she’s been away from her adopted home city of New York. “I’m always gone,” she says with a longing. But a longing for leaving again or staying longer you can’t tell. Perhaps it’s both.
In talking to Chan, I found one facet of the articles I read to prepare for this to be true, Chan apologize a lot—for nothing. You may get the impression that Chan is the kind of person who replaces the word “hello” with the word “sorry” or even apologizes to the car door if she slams it too hard. Though her movements and gestures are presented in a manner of ease with herself, her start-and-stop, sometimes broken sentences display a childlike intimidation. She seems to teeter in between adulthood and adolescence like someone who grew up too fast.
And maybe that’s just it: she might have grown up too fast. She reveals her birthplace only as the state of Georgia, even though I know she moved all over the South as a child with her mother, sister and brother (who has cerebral palsy). I’ve read about her showing up at her father’s doorstep with a garbage bag full of clothes, only to get kicked out of the house after flunking the 10th grade. She started playing guitar at 19 and formed Cat Power at 20—a name she took from a Cat Diesel hat. Shortly after forming Cat Power, Chan moved to New York, even though she had never been before. She sometimes performs alone, sometimes with a couple borrowed musicians from Dirty Three or Sonic Youth. Her critically acclaimed fourth album, Moon Pix (her second for her steady label Matador) garnered many loyal fans, as well as the pressure to create an equally beloved follow up album. This turned out to be an album full of covers aptly titled The Covers Record, on which Chan laid down versions of The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Paths of Victory” by Bob Dylan, and The Velvet Underground’s “I Found a Reason,” among others.
It feels like cheating to know so much of these things about such a private person and yet here I am sitting with her with the sole purpose of asking her to reveal more.
We found ourselves once again facing each other at opposite ends of the small table. The conversation shifted from questions about her life and emotions to those who dissect it, take it apart, and air it out for the world to discover: about music critics and journalists and how sometimes personal preference comes before critique.
Then she becomes a critic of critics. “It’s almost like comparing comparisons,” she says. “They’re referencing comparisons rather than anything resonating originally within.” Not knowing how to respond, what exactly she meant, or whether she grouped me in to those who compare comparisons, I ask the first question that pops into my head. “So what happened today that you absolutely love,” I ask using a wide sweeping gesture with my hands while saying the word “love.”
“Meeting you,” she says. “Um, meeting you and meeting her [motioning towards the female at the table next to us], my boyfriend being here thirty minutes ago,” Chan says. She goes off on a tangent about how she loved waking up with her beau: Not having to rush out, and taking the time to just lounge around in bed.
“And where have you been?”
She responds, “Everywhere.”
“And where are you going?”
“Everywhere.”
We laugh at our silliness, but I began to have this looming you-need-to-ask-a-music-related-question guilt.
“You know where I’m going?” she says excitedly, “I’m actually going to Taiwan and Tokyo. I haven’t been to Asia before.”
Seeing how ecstatic Chan was, made me equally excited for her as if she was an old friend. I realized how comfortable it was talking to one another once we started talking about our families, both revealing that we don’t come from the “normal” white-picket-fence standard of parenting. She apologizes again, either for revealing too much or asking too much. A lull in conversation after her soft-spoken “sorry” allowed me to get back to business.
“How do you feel about your new album?” I ask, then immediately apologize for asking. It must be contagious.
“I’m just happy that I am alive to turn it in instead of someone else turning it in for me.”
I wanted to ask her where such a morbid fatalist answer could come from, but her fragile conduct made me refrain from delving too deep. “How much time did you spend in the studio?” I ask instead.
“Within a year, every couple months—a couple days here and there.” She finishes up her thought, “Um, yeah. No. It doesn’t matter. Sorry.” She recorded in Los Angeles in 2002 in Los Angeles with engineer Adam Kaspar. The result was titled, You Are Free. It recalls Moon Pix with a rockier edge. It also features some guest appearances by Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl. It’s Cat Power’s first album of original material in nearly four years.
Feeling the end of our conversation was at hand, I fished for a question with an unadulterated answer. “What does matter after awhile?” I ask. She answered, smiling: “You.” I’m not quite sure whether she meant “you” specifically or “you” in general.
To my surprise the meeting ended in a hug. It was the first and only interview I’d ever done that ended that way. When thinking about her last recorded answer, I laugh a little. Of course she would say that. She’s very much from another consciousness, like a true artist, with her thoughts always on the sublime. In the end, I uncovered the most grounded flighty-yet-shy misunderstood musician and she goes by Cat Power.
Cat Power plays at the Pantages Theater on Fri., April 18, at 8 p.m.$17. All-ages. 710 Hennepin Ave., Mpls. 612-339-7007
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