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All Aboard The Davey Train

12 months ago she was known to only a small coterie of fans, but now courtesy of her Tales Of Silversleeve album Cathy Davey is packing out venues and cleaning up at awards ceremonies. Interview by Colm O’Hare

But it never crossed my mind that I would have the courage to perform in front of people.” Her artistic ambitions are not all that surprising, given that her mother is a sculptor and her father (Shaun Davey) is an acclaimed musician and composer. Despite this, she says her upbringing was not particularly musical.

“There was never really much music in the house. My dad had a den out in the garden where he’d work and my mum would be working the house. I remember she had a Leonard Cohen album – First We Take Manhattan – that was played all the time and I had the Muppets album which was a big influence on me when I was about four! And I would have been playing the piano and recording baby songs on a cassette recorder that my dad had.”

When her parents separated, she moved to England with her mother for several years before eventually moving back to Dublin permanently. She reckons that moving around so much led to her strong independent streak. “I went to four primary schools and four secondary schools in total,” she reveals. “I definitely spent a lot of time on my own because of that.”

She became more outgoing in her early teens, making an effort to connect with her peers through music. “I was more concerned with trying to fit in and I would pretend I liked what other people were into. It happed with Guns ‘N’ Roses – I learned the lyrics of all the songs but I wasn’t really into it. And I hung out with the ravers and The Charlatans and Stone Roses fans too. It wasn’t until Dublin bands like An Emotional Fish and Revelino came along that

I discovered something good was going on. It was a great time. That whole period coincided with freedom and being allowed out on my own.”

Davey did eventually attend art college for a short period but combined it with writing and recording. “College was brilliant, getting away from home so I could make a racket. It was a creative time – I got a bedroom in a flat, so it was art in the daytime and making demos at night.” She started hanging out at a Dublin studio, learning the art of recording as well as contributing backing vocals to the various bands and solo artists who came through. “That was a real turning point for me,” she acknowledges. “I’d be in there every day. I learned a lot about recording and I wrote a lot. I wanted to impress everyone by being prolific. I went from being in a bedroom playing on my own to performing on albums by Mocrac and Pete Courtney and whoever

else came in.”

It slowly dawned on her that if she wanted to progress with her career she would have to start playing live – a prospect that held little appeal for her at the time. “I just thought you wrote songs and the rest follows. I didn’t realise playing live was a totally different skill altogether. I’m so comfortable on stage now, but it took a long time. Even when I did the Tripod earlier this year I felt I didn’t belong on that stage. I just wasn’t ready for it and I didn’t know how to interact with a crowd that big. At the Olympia in June I thought I deserved to be on that stage. It was an epiphany.”

Signed to EMI in what was described at the time as a bidding war, she has mixed feelings about her well-received 2004 debut album Something Ilk. “I was so used to recording at home and not

having to play in front of everyone else,” she proffers. “Then to go into a studio where you’ve got a producer who is very confident and can see that you’re not confident and they take the reins. I could see my nice lo-fi demos moving away from what I found interesting and being led into what was good production but instead of me playing plinky-plonky piano I had a beautiful classical piano player. I was intimidated to say the least.” The Vodafone ad, she says, was a much needed boost to her profile – and her bank balance! “I got paid for it and that was a good feeling. But then someone had a go at me in an interview about it. I thought ‘What’s wrong with being allowed to make money for what you do?’ How dare anyone question it? We all do charity gigs and we don’t wear fur and that sort of stuff, but you have to make a living as well. The album has done well in Ireland, it’s stuck around for a bit. It means I have some kind of future in my home. I always want to be able to play in Ireland.”

While others predict gloom and doom for the music industry, Davey feels there’s plenty to be positive about. “This moment is terrifying in one way, but at the end of the day with the wonderful internet and live scene flourishing you should feel secure about taking things into your own hands,” she concludes. “EMI in Ireland are wonderful to work with but you’re only as good as your last album, or the debt you’re in (laughs). I’m aware as much as anyone is that nothing is guaranteed.”