Catie Curtis w/ Jenna Lindbo @ The Duck Room
March 10, 2014
You might not know this, but in the mid-to-late nineties, there was an explosion of singer/songwriter ladies who got widespread attention.
Catie Curtis at Blueberry Hill Duck Room. Photo courtesy Laine Marschik.
Sarah McLachlan, Natalie Merchant, Sheryl Crow, Paula Cole, Tracy Chapman, Fiona Apple, and India Arie were all household names, even in dirt towns of southeastern Missouri, where Korn was king. While I listened to Jewel obsessively, gals like Garrison Starr, Melissa Ferrick, and Catie Curtis were playing house shows and the Village stage at Lilith Fair, staying under the radar, but slowly planting seeds that budded modestly by the time I moved to the big city.
In 2014, when you go to club shows for the b-side ladies of Lilith Fair, you get to see a reunion of sorts. You know Catie Curtis fans by their sensible shoes and signature sassy gray pixie cuts, all the more affecting in a line waiting for entry in the Duck Room on a Friday night. Acoustic singer/songwriter types trend to the authentic (at least the good ones do), thereby incorporating life stages into their music as they go. The last time I saw Catie Curtis play the Duck Room, she and her partner had just adopted their second baby, but she was still wearing leather pants and a baby-doll t-shirt. This time, family banter was all about 9 year olds texting and looking forward to torturing their teenagers and embracing the bittersweet freedom gained when too-cool kids don’t want anything to do with their parents.
I’ve gone to a lot of acoustic shows, and I’ve seen plenty where a member of the band opens for the headliner. Instead of delineating the two as separate acts, though, Jenna Lindbo sang and played banjo for Catie Curtis for awhile, then Catie sat to the side and had a glass of wine while Lindbo sang her own songs. It was very house show, and I dug it.
Jenna Lindbo on Banjo. Photo courtesy Laine Marschik.
Be it stories of throwing a flower into the back of someone’s head on stage at Lilith, or flubbing through a high school arrangement of Proud Mary when forced to stall for a tardy Queen Latifah at Barack Obama’s Inaugural Ball, Catie Curtis is still the master of making sincerity seem cool. Her disarming charm and engaging stage presence will break the dourest cynic in minutes. Add in Jenna Lindbo, whose incandescent earnestness one swears can be seen from space, and you’re in for a wicked face-ache from a big dopey smile. Percussionist (sitting on her cajón), Louisiana’s Liz Barnet brought a warm centering calm that glued the trio together.
Liz Barnet on cajon. Photo courtesy Laine Marschik.
Sixty some-odd ladies (and a few guys here and there) gathered to glean some of Catie Curtis’ life lessons, and walked away with two big ones: adversity can’t be bigger than the character that adversity creates, and the implicit permission to celebrate the beat of a different drum.
