The Strange, Sweet World of Cat Power - January 2004

"Oh dude, things are so crazy right now, you just wouldn't believe it."

This is the first thing that Chan Marshal tells me when I call her on the phone. As it soon turns out, I do believe her. She seems to exist in a particularly chaotic world. Over the course of a week I speak to Chan on phone while she's hopping between three different cities. From Miami, we discuss the vagaries of book publishing (she's been convinced to write a book about her mystical experiences in Africa by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy). Two days later I speak to her on the phone in New York where she pops in for a few days to visit a sick friend, take in a White Stripes show and entertain international guests. Two days, a couple of phone calls and several apologies later, we plan to meet up for a drink somewhere downtown. I call the next day only to find out that Chan has flown to her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia to visit her new house and see a friend. "I'm so happy! I'm just pulling up to my house," she tells me via cell phone, "How are you?" Again, she is sweet and chatty and somehow makes it impossible for me to be irritated with her even though I begin to think that a proper interview will never, ever take place.

So, it's a big surprise when she calls me nearly a week later and suggests that we finally meet up for drinks at a bar in the west village. The person I eventually meet is totally unlike the melancholic songbird the media has so often made her out to be. Chan Marshall's reputation tends to proceed her. She is known for being evasive, hard to pin down, and more than just a little bit crazy. She's also known, under the moniker of Cat Power, to make some of the most hauntingly beautiful music of the past decade. She's also characterized by her brazen originality and a musical sensibility unlike pretty much anyone else making records today.

There is something decidedly southern about Chan and her music. Though she's lived mostly in New York for years, she still bears the marks of a refugee, having fled Georgia for the big city back in 1991. She drifted around a bit before recording her first record with Sonic Youth's Steve Shelly in 1995. Subsequently over the course of six albums she has forged her own distinct style of southern blues, a kind of gothic American guitar music that is so austere and haunting, it is, at this point, unmistakable as being anything other than her. Even with the somewhat beefed up production of her newest record, You Are Free, Cat Power music is still a simple, almost skeletal, affair. And at the center of the records is her voice. Tinged with a hint of southern drawl, it can veer from achy whisper to full-throated howl and back again over the course of a single song. And it's a voice that, when combined with her peculiar brand of ghost-story blues, has won her both huge critical praise and a devoted, almost cultish following around the globe.

So, given what I know about Chan (pronounced "Shawn") and her musical output, it's a pleasant surprise to learn that she is nothing at all that I expect. Journalists have been so in the love with the idea of portraying her as a crazy woman living perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown that they overlook the fact that she is actually quite funny and very sweet. There is something delightfully impish about her. Ordering scotch for both of us and sneaking puffs on a cigarette (which she hides under the table), she apologizes for the various delays with our interview and immediately launches into a long conversation about food. "I love to cook, I love to eat, and I love to travel," she says, ordering a bizarre and delicious combination of foods for our table, and, of course, more drinks. Over the course of the evening I will drink too much and Chan will tell me stories, make bird calls to the waitress, give me a tube of exfoliating face cleanser (in exchange for a book of poems), and tuck a piece of bread behind her ear as if it were a rose, smiling sweetly. I am resoundingly charmed.

"I've been on tour for basically five years now and it's nice to have a little bit of a break. Just a little one," she says. Though, it hardly seems like a break since she never seems to stop moving, bouncing from city to city, project to project; a bundle of nervous energy. She keeps places in New York and Miami, as well as a little place in Atlanta. When I ask where she spends most of her time, she has to think about it. "Anywhere but here. I don't mean New York really; I just mean I always want to be somewhere other than where I'm at. I can't seem to stay in one place for more than five days or so. . . but I'm trying to get better at that."

Given that she's currently involved in so many projects­trying to write a book ("Yes, yes, I've got...about four pages"), working on some art videos with Mark Borthwick ("It's a thing, I dunno. It's an art thing, and maybe it will come out on DVD. We're keeping our fingers crossed"), and new songs ("Always new songs, and who knows, some new things....Dub. Maybe reggae")-she really does keep insanely, exceptionally busy. "I have to", she says, "or else."

At a certain point our conversation turns to the more traditional topics regarding Chan and her music, at which point she grabs and my notes and proceeds to steam-roll through the questions in an effort to get them over with as quickly as possible. How does she feel about he way her work is received? "It's not really received, is it? People just kind of take it for what it is, I like the fact that it's not really "received"" And what about the voracious adoration of her fans? "They're nice people. Or maybe they aren't, I don't know. They seem nice. It doesn't creep me out at all. It's nice." And her family, her turbulent childhood? "Next question, please. We all have our thing, you know? We all have something to get over."

And then, of course, on to the subject of performing.

Cat Power shows are legendary, for lots of reasons. Live, Chan is known for being alternately brilliant and messy. She often plays as if the audience weren't there at all, sometimes turning her back to the crowd or hiding behind her hair for the duration of the show. For many, this is purely irritating, for others, this is a part of her charm. She is known to start a song and abandon it midway, to apologize and talk to herself intermittently throughout the show, and for rearranging songs to the point that they are often all but unrecognizable from the recorded versions. However, she can be a transcendent performer. Watching her can be both awe-inspiring and nerve-wracking, like watching this beautiful delicate thing that could collapse at any moment. You root for her. You feel extra grateful when the songs come out nicely. I wonder, for a person known for such shyness and ambivalence towards the spotlight, would she stop touring if she didn't have to do it? "Oh no, no," she is quick to respond, "It's more than just my livelihood. It's different. It's never easy, but it's always different, always changing. It's like...it's not hard, but then again, it is hard. People have certain expectations, and there's no way you can communicate with each person individually if you're doing something singularly, like playing a show, for two hours. You can't always cover all the bases, but I try and do that."

But is this fun? It would seem that the whole process­performing, recording, talking, publicizing­is often tough for her to deal with. She shrugs it off, "It's always changing for me. But the performing, in a lot of ways, is also always the same, or at least the people are. Everywhere you go, it could be Taiwan or Paris, it's the same thing everywhere. People are the same. And I get to travel and I get to meet people, otherwise, I would never. . . I would have never met anyone."

So while it's clear that Chan Marshall does, in many ways, exist in her own little world, it's certainly not a bad thing. It's fascinating. She might be more comfortable talking about anything in the world besides herself or the mechanics of making music, and she might be more than just a little kooky, but she is refreshingly real. In regards to both she and her art, what you see is basically what you get. Even if you're not always sure exactly what that is. Before we part ways she gives me a hug, hails me a cab, and then yells out as I'm about to be driven away.

"Call me later, maybe we can go out and do some karaoke!"

- T. Cole Rachel