Interview with Catie Curtis 9/17/08 by Elizabeth Koke

Elizabeth had the opportunity to catch up with Catie Curtis during her recent trip to New York City to chat about her new album, Sweet Life (on Compass Records) the joys of children, and the troubling sex appeal of Sarah Palin. When Catie arrived at the House Of Brews in Hell’s Kitchen, she was soggy from having braved a rain storm, and had just moments before had her luggage full of new, cute, tour clothes stolen! But despite these trying circumstances, Catie ever-so-graciously remained positive, present, and (yes, I will say it) sweet.

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Vp: Congratulations on your new record!

CC: Thank you.

Vp: I was just listening to it and thinking about how you reference the end of summer, and feeling like that was a really nice way to think about these songs…something very happy and nostalgic…

CC: Yes, like, you know it’s not going to last, but it’s really sweet.

Vp: Exactly. And I see that your children were an influence as well, for example the song “The Princess and the Mermaid”…

CC: I do find that with having kids, one thing that I notice that is different about them is their willingness to be in the moment. There is a theme in the record about being in the moment. Just the other day we heard the ice cream truck coming, and they were so excited. I said don’t get so excited, it might not come down our street, and I realize how inhibited we can be about feeling joy for fear of being disappointed. It was hard to write “Sweet Life”-- It is about being in the moment, and seeing these moments, as short as they may be, as being worth noticed.

Vp: Do you have a favorite song on the album?

CC: I have a couple of favorites. “Are You Ready to Fly?” is up there for me, because it is in a GADDAD tuning, and I was experimenting with a different style of writing. “Lovely” would be the other favorite, for the same reason--because it has a really different style for me. I have always been a fan of Cole Porter and jazz standards and that was the first time I tried to write one like that. In the songs I had learned from that era, I could never see myself because they were very “girl