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| Reading Room If you have some old 'zines with press on Freakwater or a fond memory to share, I'd welcome the opportunity to place it here.
1. "A Brief
History of Louisville Music As It Pertains to Freakwater",
by hiddenoverlord, July 2002. 8. "Freakwater at VZD's in Oklahoma
City, March 18,1999" by James Murray, for the 'zine 100
YEAR WAR. 11. "Nothing So Pure" by Cyndi
Elliot for Puncture magazine #34, 1995. A
Brief History of Louisville Music As It Pertains
to Freakwater The first series of Louisville Punk bands were for the most part East End/ Middlin' Bourgeois and comprised of, for want of a better term, freaks and what used to be called "art fags". The Louisville School of Art was the original locus. No Fun came first, then the short-lived I-Holes, then the Babylon Dance Band, the Endtables, and the Blinders. Probably the most significant figure among the musicians involved was guitarist Tara Key (No Fun, then the Babylon Dance Band, and eventually Antietam).
The more-or-less official gathering spot for early Louisville Punk was 1069 Bardstown Road, a run-down rental property surrounded by fast food restaurants and moribund businesses. The Babylons, Blinders, Dickbrains and various other bands rehearsed there, and residents included, at one time or another, Stuart Campbell, Tari Barr, Doug Maxson, Charles Schultz, Catherine Irwin, Michael O'Bannon, and other musicians and artists. The connection between East End/Art School Punk and the later South End/Hard Core scene was established in 1979 when the Abromavage brothers and Kenny Ogle wandered into a Babylon Dance Band gig. Shortly thereafter they became Babylon "roadies" (nominally) and subsequently formed their own band, Malignant Growth. They also became regular guests at 1069. That's the general background. What follows is a bare bones listing of bands and personnel, with some elaboration as concerns Catherine, Janet, and others of specific interest to Freakwater devotees. The Dickbrains (roughly 1980 - Catherine would
have been about 17 at the time) In 1981 three inquisitive teenagers showed up
at Tari Barr's door at 1069, apparently curious about the cadre
of freaks and mutants who frequented the place. These three were:
John Bailey, Wolf Knapp, and Janet Beveridge Bean. Bailey and
Knapp almost immediately formed Orange Orange with Barr on drums
(and this band later transformed into Your Food). Some months
later, Bean joined Skull of Glee as a percussionist. (in October '82 O'Bannon fired Bean for missing rehearsals. He subsequently fired Luthi and Dickson, then everybody else.) By the summer of '82, Tari Barr had been replaced in Your Food by ex-Dickbrains drummer Charles Schultz (Doug Maxson had also joined that group). She and ex-Blinder Michael O'Bannon put together a studio-only project (The Trouser Snakes), then attempted to form a working band with Catherine Irwin and Michael's brother Wink (operating simultaneously with Wink's Skull of Glee group). Catherine insisted on calling this group Bunny Butthole, as a result of which the humorless Wink quit before the band ever played out. Bunny Butthole (1982) In '83 Catherine Irwin and Janet Bean first appeared together on stage, performing "Stand By Your Man" with Bruce Witsiepe (No Fun, Circle X) on snare drum, Steve Crume on lap steel guitar, and probably Gary Stillwell (Bodeco, the Kentucky Travelers) on guitar. Catherine also performed on stage with S.Rigot and Wink O'Bannon in an ad hoc set which consisted, as memory serves, of a very long song called "We Are Same" (which were the only lyrics) and some other improvised songs that sounded pretty much the same as that one.(It was probably at about this time - at any rate, between '83 and '85 - that Catherine recorded a series of four-track demo.s with former Skull of Glee bassist Eric Smith. These were folk songs in the Carter/ Guthrie mold, several of which eventually made their way into the Freakwater repetoire.) (From this point of it can be assumed that Catherine and Janet have formed a loose and intermittent partnership of sorts.) During this period ('83 - '84), Bean joined the Zoo Directors with ex-Babylon Dance Band musicians Tara Key and Tim Harris, and guitarist Mike Weinert. Key, Harris, and Weinert subsequently relocated to New York and formed Antietam. Bean, meanwhile, met guitarist Rick Rizzo (who attended school in Lexington, Ky.) and moved with him to Chicago, where they formed Eleventh Dream Day. (The core of Dream Day was always Rizzo and Bean, and, later, Douglas McCombs. Numerous other musicians have performed and recorded with them, including Baird Figi, Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, Tara Key of Antietam, and Wink O'Bannon. In that there are a number of Dream Day web-sites where information concerning that group can be obtained, further references to them in this document will be brief. I will note, however, that among their early songs was a piece called, as I recall, City of the Seventies, composed by Catherine Irwin. It was never to my knowledge recorded, and I have only a vague memory to go by.) An attempt was made circa '84 to form a band comprised of the O'Bannon brothers, Charles Schultz, and Catherine Irwin. Catherine called this group Catbutt/ Dogbutt. The attempt failed, and no one remembers anything whatsoever about the project. In 1986, Catherine's brother and former Dickbrain Alec Irwin returned to Louisville from school and formed Butt in the Front with Wink O'Bannon, Tom Dumstorf, and Catherine, who, strangely, played electric lead guitar. Most of the material was written by Alec, although Catherine wrote some of the lyrics. (This is the only one of the "Butt" bands to actually play in public.) Butt In The Front (1986-87) At about this same time ('85-'88), Catherine's ongoing (but somewhat erratic) partnership with Janet Bean was gradually becoming more concrete, and they occasionally played out, usually "opening" for friends. In '87, for instance, they opened in Louisville for a garage band called The Bulls (John Bailey, Charles Schultz, Wink O'Bannon, ex-Babylon vocalist Chip Nold), calling themselves "Penny and Jean". At some point, probably '88, they became "Trippy Squashblossum and Mojo Wishbean", and then Freakwater per se. (Editorial note - "Earth A Tit" interjects:
Another thing I remember is that Cathy and Janet AND OTHER FRIENDS
used to sing together. This was around 1986. Specifically , I
remember seeing Cathy and Janet and two others singing in an elevator
at University of Louisville. This was before Freakwater (the moniker)
was even thought of, but I think it is important to note that
the early formation was not such an exclusive thing between Janet
and Cathy.) Initially, Freakwater and its variously named
antecedents were strictly duos, accompanied only by Catherine's
guitar. Only occasionally did other musicians join in. For instance,
Wink O'Bannon was drafted to play lead guitar at a gig in Louisville
circa 1989 or '90, at a tiny coffee shop called the Café
Dog (run by O'Bannon's sister-in-law Tari Barr - and, if memory
serves, the girls were warming up for the South End Hardcore band
Kinghorse, whose vocalist, Sean Garrison, eventually became a
contributing Freakwater songwriter). Dave Gay joined Freakwater
with the recording of their first album, and is the only musician
to appear on all of their records, but, originally, Freakwater
was Cathy and Janet by themselves, or augmented temporarily by
whoever they could dig up (and in those pre-No Depression, pre-Insurgent
Country days, hillbilly musicians were hard to come by in Indy
Rock land). (editorial note: "Earth A Tit" interjects: Sean Garrison never saw Skull of Glee. That is certain.) (editorial note: Sean Garrison interjects: After talking to Chris A. I am told that my first visit to the Beat -at age 14 or 15- Skull of Glee was not playing. I assumed it was S.O.G. because of the way the band was described to me by Wink and others many years later. It could have been Your Food or something. I know that they were local and I know I didn't like them at the time because they didn't sound like D.O.A. My bad.) Garrison is the point where South End Blue Collar Hardcore (as pioneered by the Abromavage brothers and Malignant Growth) meets (or re-unites with) East End Art Punk. It stands to reason (in an irrational cosmos) that he would end up writing country music. In the mid-80s, Squirrel Bait was the first of the East End (and Brown school) bands to achieve anything like a significant national following. Louisville punk bands before them had an extremely limited audience (usually other punk rock musicians - very insular and incestuous). Drummer Britt Walford, typically perverse and inscrutable, quit Squirrel Bait after their first recording sessions and formed Maurice with Garrison. From Maurice came, on the one hand, Slint (the quintessential Indy "post rock" art band) and, on the other hand, Kinghorse (the quintessential tougher-than-nails HC band). Walford went with Slint, Garrison went with the Horse. Slint almost never played in Louisville, and gained a significant national following. The Horse played in Louisville frequently, and never got out of town. Slint was widely influential, in the U.S. and beyond. Kinghorse was influential only in Louisville, where they absolutely dominated the local HC scene for years. (editorial note - Earth A Tit interjects: I saw three Slint shows in Louisville, one at Tari Barr's Cafe Dog. They also played at Tewligan's, etc.) (editorial note - Shawn S. interjects: To say that Kinghorse never played outside of Louisville and were influential only in Louisville is just not true. They toured a few times and in every corner they went to there was always a handful of people who "got it". I have toured all over the U.S. and Canada with bands like Lords, Coliseum and Breather Resist and in every town there is always someone who asks if we know Kinghorse or Endpoint.....and sometimes Slint. Over the years I have received letters from people who somehow or another heard about Driftin Luke, etc. and being Kinghorse fans they wanted recordings. In Minneapolis we stayed at a guy named Patti's house (He is in Dillinger Four) where he proceeded to proudly pull out his Kinghorse collection. Several years ago a band from upstate New York played the BRYCC House and between songs they played Kinghorse riffs and asked general questions about them. They were stoked to finally visit the hometown of the Horse. Blah, blah. Point being, their influence is much wider than Louisville proper. Sure, not on the scale of Slint, but the fact remains.) Garrison's transition from frightening punk to frightening hillbilly may have been inevitable. Be that as it may, his acquaintance with such exotic characters as Catherine Irwin and Wink O'Bannon helped things along. His girlfriend bought him a cheap acoustic guitar, and O'Bannon showed him how to use a capo. 4000 painful country songs ensued. In the mid-'90s, after the final break-up of the Horse, Garrison formed a series of bands called Driftin' Luke (until Hank William's estate stopped him!). The first version of the band, a studio project, included the Kinghorse rhythm section and guitarist Dave Bird. Mach Two, which began in 1996 and continued intermittently for two years or so, was a more acoustic/ folk unit, with Garrison on guitar, Corey Roederer on bass, and Wink O'Bannon on "lead" guitar. Other personnel came and went: Dave Bird was in and out, as well as members of a local band called the Pennies. The last incarnation of the group included mandolinist/ vocalist/percussionist John Paul Wright, but for most live performances the band was a trio. After '98, Luke faded away. During the course of the next four years, however, interest (primarily local) in Garrison's hillbilly period resulted in the compilation and eventual release (Summer, 2002) of the '97-'98 material, culled from studio sessions, rough demo.s, rehearsals, and live performances. In 2001 Garrison assembled an ad hoc band for a performance under his own name (rather than a group name) with Rising Shotgun (a band fronted by Garrison's friend Brett Ralph, veteran of Malignant Growth). This new and temporary group consisted of Garrison, Dave Bird, Wink O'Bannon, Gary Stillwell, and Freakwater bassist Dave Gay. Some months later Garrison played a solo set as a sort of "tribute" to a local record store owner (not coincidentally, the same record store which is releasing the Luke album), and was so disappointed with the results (bad p.a., low volume, luke-warm reception) that he put away his acoustic guitar and vowed never to appear in public again unless backed by the loudest hillbilly band on Earth. That group has scheduled its first appearance at an in-store performance in support of the Luke-era recordings compilation. Whether the loudest hillbilly band on Earth or not is undecided, and probably beside the point. Sean Garrison and band: A second, "real" debut is scheduled for late August, on a double-bill with Catherine Irwin (in what I suppose will be her first solo performance since recording her upcoming album). Part Three: Those Wacky O'Bannons
From the Chicago Reader, November, 1996: The Big Time's Big Price Maybe money can't buy everything This past April, Freakwater, the old-timey country band that the sharp-witted Irwin leads with Janet Bean, was being courted heavily by country-rocker Steve Earle to sign with his new Warner Brothers-distributed vanity label, E-Squared. It seemed as though Irwin might discover for herself if money could buy happiness, or at least soften the blows chronicled in her bittersweet songs. But after months of fruitless negotiations, what originally seemed like a sure thing has finally fallen through. Freakwater is back where it started-the sole country band on an indie-rock label that doesn't have the resources or connections to break into the country market. "All in all I think it's good that we went through this nasty experience," says Bean with a wry smile. "Maybe my bitterness will now be understood by the other members of the band." Bean's bitterness comes from previous unsavory entanglements with major labels. She is also a drummer and songwriter with Chicago rock stalwart Eleventh Dream Day, which made three albums for Atlantic amid strained and unsatisfactory label relations before returning to indie land a few years ago. While EDD's apples were spoiling, Bean's casual partnership with Irwin, a long-time chum from back home in Louisville, was ripening. In 1988 they released their debut album for the LA indie Amoeba, which had also issued the first Eleventh Dream Day recordings. By last year, with the release of Old Paint (the band's fourth album and its second on Thrill Jockey), Freakwater had expanded well beyond its original status as a lark, embarking on major U.S. and European tours. Although Irwin and Bean had encountered major label interest before, the overtures made by Earle and E-Squared A&R man Jack Emerson were the first to result in anything beyond a free dinner. Leery of getting tangled up in red tape right away, Irwin and Bean initially met and talked with Emerson sans lawyers. They liked what they heard. "He said we could continue on the path that we'd already been on," recalls Bean, who juggles her musical activities with raising a son and hostessing at the Wishbone. "They just wanted us to do it in a way that we could tour and support ourselves without being out of our minds about it." But when it was time to iron out a contract the band consulted prominent New York music attorney Richard Grabel. "[E-Squared] had to reveal their true intent when we got a lawyer," says Irwin. "What emerged," says Grabel, who provided his services pro bono, "was that they both had very different ideas about what Freakwater should be. Jack wanted Janet and Cathy to go down to Nashville and work with Nashville session musicians and make more of a produced, slick record. Janet and Cathy just wanted to keep making Freakwater records the way they always had been." Prospective record deals often fall apart, but considering Earle's reputation it's surprising that creative control became the main stumbling block. With the increasing popularity of new Nashville traditionalists like BR-549, Dale Watson, and Gillian Welch, it's no longer uncommon for the Nashville machine to grant artists the power to go against the prevailing commercial winds. Emerson declined to comment on behalf of E-Squared, sending only a tersely-worded fax that wished the group success in future endeavors. Bean and Irwin say they weren't entirely hostile to input from the label. Bean claims that they were willing to experiment with outside musicians, outside songwriters, and outside producers (their last three albums were produced by Brad Wood). "I would've done pretty much anything they'd asked to a certain degree," says Bean. "If they wanted us to wear wigs every now and then we probably would have done that--but they presented themselves as one thing and they turned out to be something altogether different." The label's refusal to grant Freakwater the ability to make final creative decisions finally ruptured the deal. The group (whose third permanent member is the silent, chain-smoking upright bassist Dave Gay) will record their fifth record, once again for Thrill Jockey, this winter. Irwin's never without some humorous bile, but
she's making a special effort to cope with this disappointment.
"Around the time the decision was made I started thinking
about in the future how I'll be living in a cardboard box, ranting
constantly and disturbing all my little box friends by talking
about the day we marched into the Time-Warner building and said,
'I don't need your goddamned money!' and everybody would be moving
their cartons away from me, thinking, 'There's that woman with
that weird Warner Brothers fixation," she explains. "I'm
not a very religious person, but I think that everyone will pay
for their sins." In response to the Freakwater article which ran in the November 22 issue of your paper [Post No Bills], we would like to clarify a few things. First, we do not consider the main stumbling
block in completing a deal with Freakwater to be creative control.
Regardless of the fact that major labels (of which we are aligned
to Warner Brothers) do not give up 100 percent creative control
lightly, we still must take creative differences into consideration
when we are signing artists to E-Squared. With the band's previous
recorded history in mind, it would be hard for most people and/or
labels to consider them anything more than a niche artist. We,
however, felt that they were much more than that and that they
could reach an entirely different and much larger audience if
they could only be heard (think Alison Krauss story). In our minds,
due to the expense and obstacles involved with putting Freakwater
on the road to promote their records, we would have to depend
largely on radio airplay to expose them to the aforementioned
larger audience, specifically AAA radio and, if we were lucky,
mainstream country radio. As we are sure you are aware, those
formats dictate a higher level of sound quality and production
value than Freakwater's previous recordings have captured (due
largely, we are sure, to their minuscule recording budgets). Because
we are essentially an independent label, we must feel about both
the artists we sign and the records they make that we stand a
modicum of success once those records come out. Otherwise, we
go under. TOP Catherine Irwin's door stands open, her keys
hanging from the lock. I know it's her door because I recognize
the National acoustic guitar standing in the front room: she strums
it on the cover of End Time (Thrill Jockey), the sixth and latest
album by her warped country band, Freakwater. Irwin lives in a
ground-floor apartment at the south end of Cherokee Triangle,
one of Louisville's most coveted neighborhoods: a hundred years
ago, the city's leisure class lined its hilly streets with stately
brick houses, marked by two-story white columns, leaded glass,
and decorative ironwork. Irwin's building is no mansion, but last
night someone tried to get in through her kitchen window, so she
and her roommate have stationed a plastic watch frog on the sill;
it has a motion sensor in its belly and croaks urgently as her
next-door neighbor passes outside. "Maybe the frog is too
sensitive," says Irwin, giggling. "It's probably gonna
get on that guy's nerves pretty bad." Way up in a hollow
tree, perfect idolatry. For more than a decade Freakwater has been a
long-distance band, held together by the stretch of I-65 that
connects Louisville to Chicago and by Irwin's long-standing friendship
with Janet Beveridge Bean. The two met in their teens at a Circle
X show, and spent several years as a couch-bound country duo.
But in the mid-80s Bean moved to Chicago, where she cofounded
the rock band Eleventh Dream Day, and Freakwater didn't make its
recorded debut until 1989. She and Irwin have been friends for
18 years now, but neither woman seems interested in moving closer
to the other. "The beauty of living in a place like this
is there's just nothing to do," says Irwin. "You really
do have to make your own fun. So people just sit around. I think
that's probably what drives Janet crazy, because she's a little
more active. But that's why they have all these dumb bands--'cause
there's nothing else to do." "Horrible," says Irwin, describing
the sessions, which took place at the beginning of the year. "We
didn't have much time to get it done, and it was very frustrating
trying to explain to people what I wanted. It was a bad January."
Bean had just separated from her husband, Eleventh Dream Day bandmate
Rick Rizzo. Freakwater bassist Dave Gay had left Chicago for Asheville,
North Carolina, making him the second commuting member. Max Johnston,
whose sterling banjo and pedal steel were highlights of Springtime,
had moved to Austin and played his last show with Freakwater in
Louisville on New Year's Eve; replacing him for the new record
was steel guitarist Eric Heywood, formerly of Son Volt. Just after
they convened in Chicago, the blizzard hit, and Irwin got sick.
"It was a lost month," recalls Bean. "It was like
a month that doesn't exist within time as we know it." Learning
to play with a drummer was the biggest challenge for a group whose
material has always relied heavily on dynamic range. "Catherine
and I drove the band, rhythmically speaking," explains Bean.
"We were working with free time in spots where we would stop
singing, and we just cued each other. Now you realize they have
to be more concrete, or else you have to play with the drummer
for a long time, so he understands all your little movements and
stuff." Bean, who drums in Eleventh Dream Day, says her songs
are naturally more rhythmic than Irwin's. "It should make
everything easier," admits Irwin. "That's what Janet
always says. Really, it should. It does put constraints on the
drama: you can't just make things longer or shorter in such a
random way, as we always did before." End Time was recorded at Uber Studio,
on Division in Humboldt Park. Producer and owner Brendan Burke--who
recorded Springtime and works frequently with local free-jazz
outfits--asked cellist and composer Fred Lonberg-Holm to arrange
the strings; Bean and Irwin wanted to avoid the usual country
cliches, so they agreed on a sparse chamber sound similar to Big
Star's Third or John Cale's Paris 1919. Lonberg-Holm,
bassist Kent Kessler, and violinist-fiddler Joel Batty played
the charts; in addition, the De Milleian cast included Jim Baker
on piano, Jeff Jacobs on Hammond organ, and Freakwater alumnus
Jon Spiegel on Dobro and mandolin. The numbers made a tough production
job even more difficult. "This record has more time-signature
changes than a lot of Rush records," says Burke. "There's
a lot of really weird nontraditional stuff here. These guys are
singing in 11ths and 12ths, and the actual structure of the tunes
is very strange, and I like that. But yeah, it was a struggle
to put other players on it." Yet End Time came out sharply focused.
Jacobs's soulful, literate organ and Heywood's sunny pedal steel
knit together beautifully on the quiet final verse of Irwin's
weary gospel tune "Good for Nothing." Bean's terrifying
blues on "Cloak of Frogs" combines fiddle, Dobro, and
vibrating pedal steel into a ghostly drone. Her love of Gram Parsons
and Emmylou Harris inflames the waltz-time ballads; the heartbreaking
"My History" melts together organ, piano, and strings
but seems still and spare, while on "Raised Skin" a
cold, clear string line frames the conjoined voices. And for all
the record's layering, among its best cuts is "Sick, Sick,
Sick," for which Irwin's guitar, vocal, and tapping foot
were recorded live through a single room mike. "Even though
we needed more time, it was good that there wasn't any more time
because people would've been dropping like flies," says Irwin.
"If we'd been in there for another week, there'd probably
be open real estate in Chicago." 'Freakwater:
Fundamental Things' by Bill Friskics-Warren One look at Freakwater's Catherine Irwin when
she's onstage singing is enough to let you know everything's not
right with the world. Banjo or fiddle may be playing their dulcet
mountain twang behind her; Irwin and her partner, Janet Bean,
may be weaving their rapturous back-in-the-hollow harmonies; but
there remains a look of pain on Irwin's face that no amount of
Carter Family conjuring can conceal. Irwin might even be urging
her audience, as the Carters did theirs, to "Keep on the
Sunny Side," but hers is the underbelly of that gospel. She's
there to testify: there's a dark and a troubled side, too. Today,
Irwin is clutching a longneck and talking theology. In town from
Louisville to visit a friend, she's sitting in the backroom of
Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, the most celebrated honky-tonk in Nashville.
It's an unlikely scene for the Buckle of the Bible Belt, a place
where folks don't often mix the pleasures of Saturday night with
the pieties of Sunday morning. But the dissonance suits Irwin,
an apostate at once drawn to and put off by Christianity. Like
a scab she can't stop picking, religion is something Irwin just
can't leave alone. Long before the advent of today's literalistic
accounts of Armageddon, Biblical prophets used apocolyptic language
to dramatize tyranny and injustice in hopes of changing the hearts
of the rich and powerful. Contrary to what those pining for the
rapture might think, men like Isaiah and Jeremiah weren't painting
pictures of some pie-in-the-sky hereafter. Rather, much as the
punks did a few millennia later, they were aiming their vivid
rants at oppression in the here and now. The prophets were not
so much predicting the future as trying to create it. Which isn't to say that Irwin's, or Freakwater's, idea of what the world could become is especially sanguine. At its best, it's a qualified, even tragic, vision: it assumes hardship is a given and the best we can do is endure it, without hurting each other too badly in the process. "Heaven, " Irwin tells us, "is for the weak at heart. " Freakwater's gripping fourth album, Old
Paint, gives voice to Irwin's vision as well as any CATHERINE ANN IRWIN and
Janet Beveridge Bean met in Louisville in 1981, while both were
still in high school. Bean was into FM rock; Irwin and her brother
were raised on their parents' hillbilly and folk records, but
played in a punk band called the Dickbrains. By Irwin's account,
the Dickbrains made "the kind of punk-rock that the children
of college professors would make" - that is, music that was
more self-conscious than aggressive. Irwin and Bean began singing
together in 1982, the year they became roommates. 'Catherine Irwin Blesses Me and Atlanta with her Graces' by newoldtymer, your humble fansite guy A huge dream of mine was realized on Friday, October 3rd, 2002, at the Echo Lounge in Atlanta, Georgia - I was finally able to see Catherine Irwin and Dave Gay introduce new songs from Catherine's "Cut Yourself A Switch": Her work on this terrific LP is just as smart as Dylan, yet as country as some 40's female country-music icon that never was, but damn well should have been. There was a full house of about 750 people, maybe. The 600 in the back made a lot of noise, but Cathy and Dave held the attention of the other 150 in front very well throughout a set of almost all unknown songs - pretty impressive. The most surprising thing about the set was, of all things, Dave: Sure, he smoked a lot as is inevitably reported, but, mostly, he kept looking at Catherine with the same mild, admiring smile that many in the audience had, following her nuance like a real pro. Afterward, I was fortunate enough to sit down and chat with Catherine. She was so kind and easy to talk to, as you might expect. (I edited down a lot of my own blather, you'll be relieved to know): You turned 40 this year, didn't you? Any epiphanies? Freakwater played Europe last month. Did
you have a chance to hang out once again in France? When I went, I found France to be really
difficult. Are the "Switch" songs pre-End
Time or post-End Time? Is there any left-over stuff that you were
holding back? I heard the new Janet song on the latest
Thrill Jockey sampler (Janet Bean and the Concertina Wire's "Glass
of a Stranger"), and I'd say her time is well spent. I think
it's great, though it sounds like she is here and you are way
over there. How did the ("Cut Yourself a Switch")
sessions in North Carolina go? You have this "less is more"
sound that I love. I suspect good albums sound easy to make, but
they are not. That's a by-product of recording, as you've
done in the past, with just one microphone? I really enjoyed the track with the Unholy
Trio. They showed remarkable restraint on that one track ("The
Only Hell my Momma Ever Raised"). I didn't know they had
it in them. Do you like playing new material (live)?
You seem completely casual about it. I think the pacing of your work is demanding
but the reward is tremendous. You don't need it. If you want to pay somebody
else, go ahead. Last thing: Tell me about your guitar. How
long have you had it, where did you buy it, and do you call it
'Maybelle'? Well, (Mother Maybelle Carter) played a very
similar-looking guitar. Hold on to that! So, why should you make the long car ride
or plane trip to see Catherine Irwin play? Because I guarantee
you can meet and talk with her and Dave, tell 'em they're great,
and they'll be nice as shit and, as a fellow fan put it, make
you feel good about yourself. And, oh yeah, they play some vital
freakin' music, too. There isn't much to do on a frigid Wednesday
night in Louisville but drink. So Catherine Irwin, leader of the
locally-based Freakwater, has left her beat-up 1982 Datsun idling
in front of the SuperAmerica convenience store while she runs
in for a six-pack. A trebly Roy Orbison tune blares from speakers
hanging outside the store, traffic rumbles down Bardstown Avenue
and a billboard nearby advertises tattoos — "done while
you wait." The setting would be perfect for one of Freakwarer's
raggedy country weepers. Down the road at a dive called the Cherokee, Irwin doesn't get carded. In fact, she seems to know everyone in the place. The room is thick with cigarette smoke and the sound of Barry White's laconic funk, occasionally punctuated by the crack of a cue ball on the break. As Irwin settles into a corner booth, she notices a copy of the Louisville Music News with Billy Ray Cyrus on the cover. She shakes her head and offers an evaluation of her country music contemporaries. "Maybe there are some folks who are doing things I wouldn't hate, but I don't know where they are." She pauses for a drink of beer. "There's Emmylou Harris, she's good. And George Jones — can't go wrong there. But like any kind of music, most of it's bad." While most current Nashville artists have abandoned country's roots in their pursuit of a pop audience, Freakwater embraces tradition as if it was long-lost kin. Founded in Louisville by Irwin and her childhood friend, Janet Beveridge Bean (who also plays drums for Eleventh Dream Day), the band wraps aching harmonies and Appalachian twang around Irwin's somber tales of southern life. Bean's clear soprano whirls around Irwin's weary alto, while steel guitar, fiddle, acoustic guitar and upright bass mingle and pair off in waltz time. With the ambience of an old-time, Blue Ridge
porch stomp, Freakwater's four albums nod to legends like the
Carter Family and the Louvin Brothers. And though the band's self-titled
1989 debut unfolded a bit unevenly and its follow-up, Dancing
Underwater, included just six originals among its 14 cuts,
the two most recent discs, 1993's Feels Like the Third Time
and last year's Old Paint, are accomplished, unvarnished
gems. Produced by Brad Wood — known for his work with Liz
Phair and Ben Lee — and released on Thrill Jockey, they're
the perfect tonic for the pop pretense that's long kept Nashville
awash in tight jeans and slick 10-gallon sentimentality. "One
thing I like so much about traditional country and bluegrass music
is that, in a way, it's so limiting," Irwin says. "Some
people get so confused with songs because there aren't any reg
ulations. The beauty of country music is that it's restricting
in the same way haiku is restricting. It puts limitations on you
that I personally need. Otherwise, there's no telling what kind
of freaky rock opera I Irwin grew up in Goshen, about 10 miles northeast
of the city, in a split-level ranch house surrounded by rolling
hills, horse farms and corn fields. Her parents were English teachers
who listened to Pete Seeger and the Kingston Trio. Mom played
some piano and dad played the bagpipes "badly," Irwin
recalls. At 16, she and her brother, Alec, formed a folk
band called the Dickbrains. She strummed acoustic guitar, he played
recorder. "I always wanted to be in a band like the Incredible
String Band with a bunch of really handsome hippie guys,"
she says, with a laugh. "Looking at the pictures on their
records, I thought it would be so great, sort of like dreaming
about being in the Manson family. I kind of wanted to have, like,
the Manson Family Singers. Our little band was kind of like that,
except it was just me and my brother." After discovering
the Dead Boys and bar chords, the Dickbrains went punk for awhile
and eventually disbanded. WHEN SHE WASN'T THRASHING withthe Dickbrains, Irwin played country music alone in her bedroom. She was working up a few Tammy Wynette covers when she heard about an open stage at a local bar. "I don't know why I chose Janet [Bean] as my victim for this, but I wanted somebody to sing with me," says Irwin. "She lived near my best friend in high school, and I used to see her walking down the street. We used to be really mean to her because she was younger than us, but by this time we had been friends for about six months. Anyway, she said she would do it. "I was terrified," Bean says later. "It was at the Beat Club, a place surrounded by strip clubs on the seedy side of town. We got dressed up for it, and I wore a red polyester dress, vinyl boots and a wig. I might have stuffed my brassiere, too. lt was a lot of fun. I remember people were clapping and singing along to songs like 'Pistol Packin' Mama' and 'D-I-V-O-R-C-E.'" Irwin and Bean continued to sing and play guitar
together, and though they made tapes on a four-track in the basement
of Bean's parents' house, their attitude about releasing records
was laid-back to the point of indifference. In fact, when Amoeba,
a Los Angeles-based/indie label, approached them about making
a record in 1988, they didn't even have a name. When they settled
on Freakwater, a made-up word they con- sidered meaningless, neither
of them knew it was a term for moonshine whiskey. By that time, the two women were living in separate
cities. Bean was in Chicago drumming for Eleventh Dream Day and
Irwin was painting houses and canvasses (her artwork graces the
covers of all four Freakwater discs, as well as two by Eleventh
Dream Day) around Louisville. According to Irwin, making Freakwater
records and touring with the band was little more than an excuse
to get together with her old friend. "Singing with Janet
is really the only fun thing about being in this band," she
says. "That's why we started doing this in the first place.
The rest of it all is just stuff we have to do." Like touring, which Irwin and Bean do begrudgingly.
"It's an utter nightmare," says Bean. "It's kind
of like having a baby. The pain is monumental, but you forget
how awful it was. Then, you're ready to do it again." Recent
swings through the U.S. (opening for Wilco) and Germany were arduous
affairs. "One thing that really struck me when we played
those shows with Wilco was they seem like they have a lot more
fun in their band," Irwin says. "I guess they're just
better musicians, but they actually seem like they're having a
good time, whereas we seem like we're being tortured.
When we're on tour, I keep telling myself, 'This is kind of hellish,
but it's better than painting some-body's bathroom.'" Irwin is low-key about the future. She anticipates recording a follow-up to Old Paint this summer, but says the band is not seeking a deal with a bigger label. Freakwater will continue to tour, but how extensively depends on two factors: the health of Bean's four-year-old son,who suffers from glucose intolerance,and the status of Eleventh Dream Day. "I don't know if I'll always get to make records," Irwin says, "but it's nice that in the kind of music I play — like writing or painting — people don't really expect you to be any good at it until you're 60." Late in the afternoon,
Irwin pours another cup of coffee and turns her attention to the
subject of writing songs. On Old
Paint, she tackles themes such as thankless jobs ("Waitress
Song"), physical deterioration ("Gravity"), AIDS
("Gone To Stay") and fractured dreams ("Ugly Man").
Her material on previous Freakwater albums is similarly dark.
When I point out that traditional country themes — such as
death, despair and poverty — keep coming up, Irwin says she
doesn't understand why they're so strongly associated with the
genre. "It seems like they should be themes of general life,"
she says." It seems odd to me that they wouldn't just be
everywhere. Any horrible thing that's happened to any one person
has probably happened to somebody else, at least in terms of having
a bad job, getting beat up by somebody, getting sick or some- "They're pretty
universal subjects," she continues, "so I feel like
if we stick to them, we'll just keep cranking out the hits. I
mean, what else do people have to write songs about? How nice
everything is?" I'd always fantasized asking Janet about her music over beers, but one must work within the realm of the possible: Last week, I sat at work in a unpainted cider block room with no windows, sharing the telephone earpiece with my microcassette recorder, floor polisher humming on the other side of the wall, while Janet, at work in a Chicago high-rise, patiently put up with my questioning and technical problems. Amazingly, we were still able to share a decent conversation, and a laugh or two. I thought it was clever how you put the lyric
sheet to the new CD (Dragging Wonder Lake) on the CD itself. I
own a lot of music, but I've never seen that before. Dragging Wonder Lake has been in the can
for a while now. Have you been chomping at the bit to get it on
the street, or are you feeling casual about it? So how does it feel, at least for the time
being, not being half of a team anymore - no Eleventh Dream Day,
no Freakwater - does having that latitude give you more satisfaction,
more peril, both, neither? It's not so much being satisfied as just finishing it. I've been playing in bands for twenty-five years, and I've always said, "I'm going to make this (solo) record, I'm gonna do this." So I'm really excited by the fact that I've done it, that I've actually completed something I said I was gonna do, which is so rare for me! (laughs) Despite the fact that I work an eight- or nine-hour day, have a son, and am a single mother, I got it done, so I'm sort of like "Well, damn, I accomplished something!" That's pretty amazing, you've got such a
full plate, I'm not sure how you do it. . . Share some with me, then, I need it. I've
assumed the origin of this new project is in the making of End
Time, since they're somewhat sonically related. Did you get introduced
to Fred (Lonberg-Holm, who plays cello on both LPs) at that point,
or did you know him already? What role did Fred have in the creating
of End Time and Dragging Wonder Lake? I think everyone that played on the record has an equal contribution. I just brought the songs in, and I desperately tried to show the best I could how they go, and I said to everyone, "Can we make this song have this kinda feel?" I'm continually struck by how unique and
original songs like (Springtime's) "Binding Twine",
(End Time's) "Written in Gold" and (DWL's) "Glass
of a Stranger" are. I've just never heard anything quite
like them. Can you tell me a little about where you draw your
musical ideas from? I think Catherine (Irwin, of Freakwater) has a framework she works in that can be traced down from more specific places like the Carter Family and Hazel Dickens. I think that is her forte and she writes compelling, beautiful work within those constructs. I, on the other hand, operate without those types of specific constructs or, if there are constructs, they are far less consistent. This is neither a good or a bad thing for either of us - just a different thing. So, how many shows are Concertina Wire going
to play this year? After I turned the tape machine off,
Janet told me more about her future schedule, leaving me fairly
certain that I will probably never get to see Concertina Wire
play. My loss. "Freakwater at VZD's in Oklahoma City, March 18,1999" by James Murray, published in the 'zine 100 YEAR WAR On stage, Catherine Irwin conjures up
not a single legend from the country or folk that was. No shades
of Loretta or Tammy or Patsy exist in her. Perhaps a shade of
the gloomiest side of Carter family women, but mostly that is
a Kentucky accent and a thousand-yard stare. Catherine is completely
unposed, as she slouches arounds stage in boots, trousers and
a "Future Farmers of America" jacket bearing the name
of a Confederate Army war dead. She pauses to squint into the
audience (maybe twenty people). She bickers with her band, exhibits
her sarcasm and breaks into nervous laughter. Then Freakwater
begins to play, and Catherine and Janet Bean trade verses and
wail together. The song is a tragedy - everyone pays, everyone
loses. When they wail it's like a hot wind, two hundred years
of southern working woman Freakwaters Run Deep by Thomas Peake Anyone who has appreciated the disturbances
underneath the surface in the writings of Southern authors like
Peter Taylor or Flannery O’Connor will understand Freakwater.
For that matter, all ordinary folk have been there. |
