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Upcoming shows
- 09/03/12 Catherine Britt in Hornsby, NSW at Hornsby RSL Club Buy tickets
- 10/03/12 Catherine Britt in Campbelltown, NSW at The Cube – Campbelltown Catholic Club Buy tickets
- 17/03/12 Catherine Britt in Pokolbin NSW 2320 at CMC Rocks the Hunter Buy tickets
- 30/03/12 Catherine Britt in Erindale, ACT at The Auditorium at Vikings Buy tickets
- 01/04/12 Catherine Britt in Pambula, NSW at Oaklands Event Centre Buy tickets
Press
Rave Magazine – Live Review The Globe, Brisbane – Fri Dec 3
Arriving at The Globe to news their doors are staying open, at least for now, I’m invited to ‘review the venue, not the bands’. It does feels right to stretch out on the worn carpet to take in the voyeuristically intimate shows of Nashville-returned alt-country artists Catherine Britt and Brisbane’s own Chris Pickering.
As candidly confessional in her song introductions as in her lyrics, Britt dedicates What I Did Last Night to the hangovers we’ll sport come morning, and bares the chip on her shoulder, launching into the arresting Call You Back Town. My current emotional state is akin to a floodgate, so it’s no surprise the raw emotion of Too Far Gone chokes me up. A lovelorn rendition of Sweet Emmylou is another highlight, as Britt proves her song’s point – good music can be medicinal.
Chris Pickering opens by performing a duet with Britt on Cool Southern Night. The pair work wonderfully together, especially later on Fisherman’s Daughter. He plays to his crowd – deadpan and slightly self-deprecating, but ever grateful. From jokes following a spine-tingling Hasta Luego, to calling the beautiful I Just Want To Love a ballad for “you sensitive bunch”, he proves to have none of the ego of the musical heavyweights he is often compared to. The audience livens slightly during the up-beat Fit To Print and calls for an encore, amidst which is a stunning version of Love Hurts, making me concede this whole tour was designed as a comfort hug to the heartbroken.
It’s an unfortunately small affair for the final leg of their national Fact Or Fiction tour, but that doesn’t stop them from demonstrating exactly why they deserve a much bigger hurrah.
Beat Magazine Review October 2010
When Novocastrian Catherine Britt took her musical coal to Nashville she stoked the star machinery without igniting the chart boilers. The singer was signed because of her pure country voice and the writing on her indie debut album, which was produced by Bill Chambers. Although Chambers co-produced her first Nashville disc, neither he or hit maker Keith Stegall could coat it with suffice chart candy to crack narrow radio playlists.
Ditto studio star-maker Brett Beavers who produced her second Nashville disc. Britt made the Top 40 with catchy singles but was never superficially ‘pretty’ enough for radio with female quota filled by Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Kellie Pickler. Ironically, Pickler hit big with a Britt original (from one of two discs rejected in the US but released here.)
Britt however, like many peers, harvested hay from her hell by writing Call You Back Town for her self-titled resurrection album, with Chambers back at the helm with son-in-law Shane Nicholson. This strident social comment tune on Nashville may not be the most radio-accessible song, but it’s sure as hell the most memorable. Let’s not forget haunting Harris homage Sweet Emmylou – a tune penned many moons ago by Britt and prolific peer Rory Lee Feek. Feek – of Joey & Rory – also recorded the Emmylou Harris tribute and Britt thought it was so nice she cut it twice, first time as a hidden track.
That’s just two of 14 Britt originals on an album cut at Sing Sing in Richmond with similar studio pickers to Britt’s mentor Kasey Chambers. What about the rest? Well, Britt fueled an eclectic disc from passionate and riveting entrée I Want You Back to pathos-primed finale Lonely and Where Do You Go? Britt also plays a woman scorned on Down and Anywhere You Are – two of three tunes penned with fellow Nashville label refugee Ashley Monroe.
But there’s a distinct mood swing on positive love songs – the hook heavy Can’t Change A Thing and More Than You Are with Melanie Horsnell as co-writer. Britt employs salient sequencing. The dominatrix diva in rocking Under My Thumb that segues into Call You Back Town becomes a sweet believer in biblical ballads Holy River and Sleepy Town. Then it’s regret stained Since You Slipped Away written with expatriate Aussie guitarist-singer Jedd Hughes and the pained paean of Saved Me.
This is a concept album of sorts and welcome return for Australia’s most under-rated femme fatale. And hey, the band’s pretty good too. Bill Chambers’ dobro and mandolin on Sleepy Town and Holy River, Nicholson’s banjo and fiddler Mick Albeck enrich her fourth album’s country roots.
By DAVID DAWSON
Sunday Telegraph, June 7, 2010
CATHERINE
BRITT
Catherine Britt
ABC/Universal
4\5 Stars
FOUR albums in, Britt has finally found herself. From the first track she’s a more considered artist, comfortable to explore and express her own voice. Where Do You Go?, the emotive last track, is by far a standout, although there’s plenty to love about this album.
Rhythms Magazine story – June 2010
TRUE BRITT
Catherine Britt takes back creative control with a new self-titled album. BY CLIVE SIMMONS
“I learnt to sing around the house.” Catherine Britt says. “I sang everywhere; in the shower, even in the toilet. I drove everyone insane. I would sit on the kitchen floor while my mother cooked dinner and sing because the kitchen had great acoustics.
“I was a hyperactive child and I discovered that music was the only thing that calmed me. It was an important discovery, and truly my saving grace.” Britt, who has the voice of an angel and looks to match, fell under the spell of country music as a young child, and shows no signs of recovering anytime soon, which is probably good news for music lovers everywhere.
Her mother, she says, was a “tree-hugger”, a Newcastle hippie chick for whom saving animals became the deepest of passions, and her father, a school counsellor, nurtured her nascent musical ambitions leaving music or films on her bed for Britt to absorb.
“My father strategically placed a copy of the film Coal Miner’s Daughter on my bed,” she says, “and I remember thinking ‘Wow. That’s what I want to be: a poor hillbilly who lives in the mountains and sings country music.’ “I was really taken by the film, and I started studying the history of country music and I became quite scholarly in my approach to it. I didn’t want to pretend to sing country music when I didn’t know what it was all about and the history that attended it, so I became quite obsessional about reading about it. I can’t tell you what it was about country music that got to me, but it really shook my soul.”
She started playing in pubs when she was barely eleven. “There was a music night at the local RSL club where you could bring your charts and play with the band,” she says, “though I didn’t start doing paid gigs until I saw Bill Chambers playing there one night.
“I walked up to him and asked if he’d play a Jimmie Rodgers song. He asked me how old I was, and I said that I was eleven. He asked me how in hell I knew who Jimmie Rodgers was, and I said ‘I just do’. I asked him if he’d play ‘TB Blues’, and he said he would if I’d get up and sing it with him. I think he thought it would be rather cute – you know a young girl from the audience getting up and singing with him – but he realised then that I could sing, and he became my mentor.”
He produced her first EP, In The Pines, and a track off it, ‘That Don’t Bother Me’, which she co-wrote with Chambers’ daughter, Kasey, who helped out by doing back-up vocals, rocketed to Number One on the country charts. An album, Dusty Smiles And Heartbreak Cures, which her parents scraped $5,000 together to record, spawned no less than four hit singles, and it was this album which Elton John got hold of and which paved the way for her to go to Nashville.
“That’s a strange story,” she says. “I was on the computer playing solitaire when the record label called me and said ‘You’re gonna think this is weird, but Elton John has been going around at all his shows talking about you and your album. He went into a record store and asked someone what new stuff he should listen to, and the guy on the counter mentioned your album. So, he heard it, and now he wants to meet you.’
“So, I went down to Sydney to meet him. It was so surreal. There were all these cute boys with ripped muscles walking around with drinks in these little gladiator outfits. “Elton came over to me and said ‘I am such a fan of your album.’ He asked me if I’d ever been to America, and I said that I hadn’t, but that I’d love to check out where the music I was singing began. “The next day, my manager said that he had ordered twentyalbums to take with him back to America, and a few days later, every major label in Nashville was on the phone.”
She signed with RCA though the experience wasn’t all she hoped. She recorded two albums there, though RCA never officially released either of them in the US. “Those albums were label albums,” she says. “It’s different when a lot of people have a say over what’s getting recorded. You know, it’s their money so they should have one, but in the end, I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to compromise. It’s like giving your art away.”
She returned to Australia and started working on new material, culminating in her recent album, Catherine Britt, and the song ‘Call You Back Town’ informs the six years she spent in Nashville. Co-produced by Shane Nicholson and Bill Chambers, Britt wrote all 14 songs on the album.
“Look, to be able to make an album which, I feel, truly represents me as an artist and a songwriter means the world to me,” she says. “You might say that this album is me getting back to my roots, and there’s one major difference: I have creative control.
“I didn’t get eaten up and spat out in America, and yes, there were compromises, and yes, we were trying to appeal to American radio and the American market, but I got a little bit lost. But I’m on track now, and I know who I wanna be now.”
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