INTERVIEW: Cathy Davey

Success didn’t come easy, but a best selling album and awards aplenty has turned things around for Cathy Davey, writes Marc Gallagher

First emerging in the Irish music scene in 2004 with her album Something Ilk, Cathy Davey was met with mixed commercial and critical success. It was described as an adventurous debut that was a “spikier alternative to many female singer songwriters in Ireland” and led to comparisons with musical heavy weights such as PJ Harvey.

However Davey herself wasn’t overly pleased with the product. “It sounded like I was listening to someone who was uncomfortable playing.” Touring this album, mostly on her own – financial constraints meant she couldn’t hire musicians- – wasn’t easy with the artist suffering from a near crippling case of stage fright. “Even playing in front of my family could make me feel like puking.”

After her first attempt faded into the ether of the radio station’s back catalogue, Cathy took a step back from the limelight. This break did not spell the end of her musical career, but rather an opportunity to write and record in a “house full of drums and old instruments”.

Her hiatus from active duty also gave a chance for her to record vocals for bands such as Elbow and the Wicklow based electronic act Automata. During this period she also suffered bouts of writers’ block, but passed just in time for her to put together her sophomore album Tales of Silversleeve, released this past October. 

This experience had its own process, different to that of her first album. “I wrote half the album on drums instead of piano or guitar, because I really wanted to make music that would keep me lifted through the whole process.”

The recording of the second album was also more of a collaborative effort, working closely with Conor O’Brien, guitarist and songwriter of with the successful – albeit short-lived  – Dublin band, the Immediate. This was a change from her experience of recording her first album, which was a solitary but not a lonely one –“writing and playing on my own was the highlight.”   

The timid 29-year-old’s music has matured into a more defined and rounded sound with elements of pop, rock and folk mixed in the right measurements with a touch of the whimsical to deliver a great album. There’s even music to dance to, in a “child-like, don’t catch me on camera way,” according to the lady herself.

In musical terms, her influences are incredibly broad ranging, from American soul icon Marlena Shaw to British goonie Spike Milligan. As well as being a songwriter and musician, Cathy is also an artist filling notebooks with drawings and illustrations to accompany each song - an integral part of her process.
The arrival of the new material into the public consciousness meant Cathy would have to go out and tour to promote the new album. A support slot for REM when they played Dublin’s Olympia Theatre in July helped her back into the swing of playing live. 

However, she had been away from the music scene for over two years – to remind the fans of her existence, she assembled a band to start a series of residency gigs around the country for a solid month. This was an exhausting approach but proved her worth and her popularity began to grow. 
The assembling of a new band and extensive touring also meant her overcoming her stage fright.  While before she had “never been comfortable” performing, she now get up on stage without feeling like she was “going to fall over.”

She is thrilled with the new line-up supporting her and has helped her confidence to grow. Her myspace page show a slideshow of her and the band mates that looks suspiciously like a family holiday photo album as the group tour around the country. 

This tour has been a gruelling one, pretty much non-stop since the release – she admits “the problem is that I’m inherently lazy, and I like to be idle”. This is a problem, especially when you consider her timetable for this year – a tour of the UK following the album release, on to Holland, then America and Canada for numerous dates – including the prestigious South By Southwest Festival in Texas – and then on to the Czech Republic and Slovakia. 

The band has also helped breathe new life to songs that had been recorded almost ten months ago.  “Different [musicians] help make the songs different each time – I’m definitely not sick of them,” she said.

Cathy has also begun to settle any personal qualms she had with being signed to a major record label. “I thought that being signed to a major [record label] would make it easier to have my concepts come to fruition but, at the end of the day, they just didn’t know what I was on about,” she said.

After the misfiring of her first album, Cathy’s record label was slightly nervous about investing more by throwing good money after bad. The executives for English Parlophone Records were sure the Irish songstress debut would strike gold – pumping cash in, paying for a top studio and producer (in the form of one-time Sneaker Pimp, Liam Howe) as well as a lengthy promotional campaign – “I must have toured the UK about 12 times,” Cathy remembers.

The album was not as successful as planned: Cathy doesn’t mince her words “it was a disaster financially”. However, with recent record company shake-ups, acts are being dropped from the label left, right and centre – should Cathy start packing? “I don’t think it’s something to worry about for the moment,” she said.

Her latest album, Tales of Silversleeve, has enjoyed a great deal of homeland success and the next port of call for the album is the UK, where it is soon to be released.  Cathy has enjoyed the reception the album has received at home – it’s an album she has worked hard to produce and is proud to tour around the country and promote through radio and TV sessions.

In fact Cathy will soon be back on our screens in the sixth series of the Dingle-based music review, Other Voices. However, success may not be as easy to achieve overseas. “I think that people in the UK think that Ireland is easy for an Irish artist to do well in – [while] the UK gauge for success is appearing on Jools Holland and NME,” she says.

Cathy has also just won a Meteor Music Award – after three years of nominations – and her album was up for a Choice Music Award. “It’s not something I take very seriously,” she says about the award ceremonies.

But this time it could have been a little different, “for the last one I felt like I didn’t deserve it because it just seemed like I was nominated because there was only a few female artists around, but this time I’ve really put the work in and maybe it’s proper order that I’m up for an award.”

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