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CATHY RICHARDSON BAND |
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FEATURE
One of Chicago’s Best Kept Secrets…CATHY RICHARDSON BAND
Text By Ernie Thomas/ Photos by Tom Lounges
Cathy Richardson is the disembodied voice who confidently and sweetly sings out from your radio speakers –– “Like A good neighbor, State Farm is there!”
She has done dozens of “jingles” over the last few years. Hiring out her voice for radio and television commercials has certainly helped this struggling musician and indie record mogul survive while waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to most Chicagoans in realizing that Richardson is a gifted artist deserving of their attention.
Even Grammy Award-winning songwriter/performer Jim Peterik of Ides Of March and Survivor fame is quick to shout her praise anytime someone will listen.
An entrepreneur who markets her music through her own nationally-distributed Cash Rich Records imprint, Richardson cites the Chicago rock icon as a musical mentor.
“Jim Peterik has really taught me a great deal about songwriting,” she said. “I’m thrilled every time he asks me to be a part of one of his World Stage events.”
Richardson sang a duet with the multi-platinum rocker on the first World Stage All-Star album, after Peterik happened to stop at her father’s service station to top off his tank one day. The rocker left not only with quality gas, but also some CRB demos and an earful of praise from dad.
Richardson said she owes her drive and business sense to her father, and her voice to her mother, a lifelong singer who encouraged young Cathy’s own musical dreams.
These days Peterik is not the only celebrity numbered among Richardson’s fans. Others include Emily Sailers of the Indigo Girls, Chicago new wave pioneer Nicholas Tremulis, and the family of late ‘60s rock icon, Janis Joplin.
The Joplin clan embraced Richardson after she gave a critically-acclaimed performance as Janis, during the original New York run of the Off-Broadway musical, “Love, Janis.” She also reprised the role in Chicago for a short run.
Sailers duets with the Southwest Side native on “Blindsided By Love”, from the Cathy Richardson Band’s most recent CD, The Road To Bliss.
Tremulis pairs his vocals with Cathy on another track, “I Can’t Forgive You.”
Though still out promoting this album –– which landed Richardson a Grammy nomination for “Best Album Packaging” –– she is currently mixing down the band’s forthcoming album, with Grammy-winning engineer Ed Cherney (Goo Goo Dolls/Rolling Stones/Bonnie Raitt).
“The new one is called Delusions of Grandeur,” she said. “It’s a sadder album than The Road To Bliss. I had written two albums worth of material when I started putting The Road To Bliss together. I had some songs written, then during the whole process, I had gone to New York to do ‘Love Janis’, where I wrote a lot more. When I came home, I had way more than an album’s worth of tunes, so I picked songs that fit best with the ‘bliss’ theme, so it’s a pretty happy sounding album.”
Richardson paused and opted to re-define the Delusions of Grandeur material as being more ‘mellow’ than actually ‘sad’.
“It’s a lot mellower because I did a lot more with orchestration on this record and the production is a lot more grand,” she said. “Some are less happy songs remaining from what I didn’t use on the last album. Some are ones recently written and they reflect that I’ve gone through some hard times over the last couple of years, including losing my mother to cancer.”
As done previously with The Road To Bliss, Richardson is collaborating with her friend Bill Dolan on the packaging for the new CD, which she hopes will be released by the year’s end. Bill is my webmaster (www.CRBand.com) and he also happens to be an awesome artist, from drawing and painting to graphics and web design,” she said.
Richardson has been reluctant to tour much outside of the Chicago/Midwest market. “We play quiet a bit just around here,” she said. “When you go on the road it is not often a great experience and here we do great.”
That all may soon change if she is successful at getting an established label to pick up the rights to Delusions of Grandeur, because a label will likely insist that she hit the road to support the album outside of her cozy home turf.
Should that happen, Richardson is ready. “I’m surrounded by very talented people. I’ve got a great live band that I’m really happy with,” she confides.
Aside from her longtime guitarist, Joel Hokestra, the 2005 CRB incarnation includes bassist Fran Kondorf, fiddle player Anne Harris and drummer Rich Stitzel.
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Chicago
radio station WXRT is also populated by CRB fans, and frequently give
air play to their songs, including “Miracle” and “This Town”,
from The Road To Bliss. The Sunday evening Night Rock
show on X-ROCK 103.9 in Northwest Indiana is also now playing CRB tunes
from this latest CD.