Cat Clyde
Cat Clyde is a Canadian singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Her sound is drenched in roots influences: blues, soul, folk, jump, jazz, and even swing. Her voice is a crystalline contralto that enunciates each syllable, imbuing her songs with resonance and meaning. Ivory Castanets, her 2017 debut, drew press notice for its contrast between youthful singing and timeless song forms. 2019's Hunter's Trance, for Cinematic Music Group, found Clyde backed by an aggressive garage band in a collection split between ballads and barroom rockers. 2020's Blue Blue Blue was a raw, barebones collaboration with her partner, singer/songwriter Jeremie Albino, offering covers of classic roots material, and 2023's Down Rounder was recorded in six days with producer Tony Berg and a cast of handpicked players in a Los Angeles studio. It took Clyde more than two years to move from the song sketches to the finished masters.
Clyde was born in southwestern Ontario. Her family settled in Perth County near Stratford when she was ten. Growing up in a rural environment offered certain advantages. She and her dog spent hours walking in the woods, taking in nature and its processes. One presumes that the influence of the natural world in her songs is drawn from that youthful experience.
At 14, she was given a guitar by her family, who owned a music shop. Clyde was aided in the basics by a neighbor boy who played. She learned quickly, and in a short time was teaching guitar to other kids at her parents' shop. The store also fostered her first band, the Big Wheels, composed of the store's music tutors. The group only played a few gigs at fairs and festivals, but it provided Clyde with an invaluable experience -- a natural introvert, working in front of an audience brought her out of her shell. She also began writing songs in earnest.
She moved to Stratford and busked on the streets during the warmer months, and enrolled in college where she studied the music business -- recording, engineering, and record production. She met a number of people through school friends and classmates. Someone put her in touch with surf punk outfit the Shibats and she joined as a vocalist. It was during her tenure with the band that she met future partner, singer/songwriter Strummer Jasson.
Still in school, Clyde, with the help of bassist Steve Clark, and brothers Andrew Fockler (drums) and Patrick Fockler (co-producer, guitarist, keyboardist) cut Ivory Castanets, her debut album. Its balanced acoustic and electric instrumentation in carefully written songs won airplay across Canada, positive album reviews in the press and on the internet, and a record deal with Cinematic Music Group.
Clyde and Jasson moved to Quebec and recorded her sophomore full-length and label debut, Hunter's Trance. The nine-song set was released in 2019. Performed by an uncredited band, it nonetheless carefully balanced acoustic and rootsy electric instrumentation. The set's bookend tracks, the swaggering "Bird Bone" and the full-band version of "The River" won notice in Europe as well as Canada. Clyde took the group on the road, performing well-attended dates on both sides of the border and achieving considerable streaming success in the U.S.
That ground to a halt when the COVID-19 pandemic started in March 2020. Just before she and Jasson returned to their Quebec apartment, she cut Good Bones, an acoustic collection whose songs were drawn from her first two band-backed albums. Released to streaming, it resonated with fans and won positive notice from critics who'd not encountered Clyde before. The couple set up a home studio and planned to sit out the pandemic working at home. That didn't happen. Both became consistently ill and not with COVID. With an environmental test kit, Clyde discovered aggressive mold spores present and spreading. They were relocated to another apartment owned by the landlord. After investigating, the landlord discovered the source: an abandoned nest with rotting eggs in the ceiling above their bed. They never returned to that apartment, opting to move to Stratford instead. There they recorded Blue Blue Blue, with their homespun studio setup. It offered covers of country and blues songs from Willie McTell's "You Were Born to Die" and Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country" to Elizabeth Cotten's "Freight Train" and A.P. Carter's "Hello Stranger."
During the pandemic, Clyde had an entire album ready but no way to record the songs. She began reaching out to producers, players, studios. It took a solid year of frustrating encounters before she reached out to famed producer Tony Berg (Ted Hawkins, Aimee Mann, Andrew Bird). He'd just completed a project with Phoebe Bridgers.
Clyde and Berg workshopped her songs over Zoom, stripping them to their roots and rebuilding them from the ground up. When his schedule opened up, Clyde flew to Los Angeles. Berg booked a band at the famed Sound City Studios. It took only six days to record Down Rounder. Released in February 2023, its woolly yet hooky Americana single, "Everywhere I Go," won notice and led the album to the streaming charts.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo
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Discographie
19 album(s) • Trié par Meilleures ventes
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Ivory Castanets
Rock - Paru chez Cinematic Music Group le 5 mai 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hunters Trance
Folk - Paru chez Cinematic Music Group le 14 juin 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Blue Blue Blue
Pop - Paru chez Cinematic Music Group le 21 mai 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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All the Black (Acoustic)
Pop - Paru chez Cinematic Music Group le 29 mai 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Been Worryin'
Pop - Paru chez Cinematic Music Group le 30 avr. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Cat Clyde on Audiotree Live
Pop - Paru chez Audiotree Music le 23 avr. 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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All the Black
Pop - Paru chez Cinematic Music Group le 8 févr. 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Freight Train
Pop - Paru chez Cinematic Music Group le 30 avr. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Papa Took My Totems
Alternatif et Indé - Paru chez Second Prize Records le 27 janv. 2023
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
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Mama Said (Acoustic)
Pop - Paru chez Cinematic Music Group le 15 mai 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -