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Interview: Cat Power

Alien invaders. Ginger giants. Recording and touring by herself. Here's Chan Marshall, AKA Cat Power, keeping it really, really real.
Last updated: 2015-11-09


Critically adored and worshipped by fans, Chan Marshall — stage name Cat Power — emerged in the early '90s with her first release, Headlights, before signing to Matador and putting out another eight albums on that most respected of New York indie labels. Periods of high productivity and massive acclaim were chopped up by problems with the booze, canceled tours and periods of mental exhaustion. Last year after the release of her most recent album, Sun, she was due to make her first appearance in China but canceled the entire world tour in a state of exhaustion. And yet Sun marked a peak in her career, racking up Cat Power's highest sales and also ushering in a new, seemingly more positive sound in her music.

She plays this weekend as part of Beijing label Modern Sky's autumn program of shows, and it's certainly a high-point in the month's live music calendar. We spoke to Chan Marshall on the phone from California, where she's currently on tour.

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Chan Marshall: Ni hao!

SmSh: Uh, hi… We had an interview scheduled with…

CM: Hi, this is Chan. Do you speak Mandarin?

SmSh: Ohhhh. Hi Chan. Yes, yes — ni hao.

CM: Ni hao! Where are you from? How come you don't have a Chinese accent?

SmSh: I'm from Taiwan and grew up in LA. I speak Mandarin, but my English is better. The only time I have an accent is when I'm mimicking my mom's Chinglish.

CM: Do it! Do it!

SmSh: Aw, I can't make fun of my mom in public.

CM: But it's the future, isn't it? You've seen Blade Runner? Where everyone speaks in different Chinese dialects, with some Spanish and some English? That's what America will be like.

SmSh: We can only hope.

CM [Laughs]

SmSh: OK, so Sun’s been called a departure for Cat Power, both for its mood and its sound — is that the way it seems to you, or was it the natural culmination of a progression that’s been going on for a while?

CM: The album is a departure from picking at the guitar and piano like I used to, putting my hands to use with other dynamics that I’ve never recorded before. Like using the guitar and then using a computer to chop that up and run it backwards and slow it down and throw it around. That was really great because I learned how to use Pro Tools, and I never did a digital record before. I really had a great time.

To me, music is a trade, like sewing or being a dishwasher, or a nanny or a teacher. It’s a handicraft, like knitting or being a chef. It’s something you do with your hands, it’s a visual. I’ve never really been proud of any of my work in the past but I was proud of this record, so I guess that's something. Me being proud of myself is a much greater award than I've ever had in the past, you know what I’m saying? That’s all that really matters. That’s my success.

And it came out top 10 in America, but then I got sick with this illness from stress. It’s an immune disorder, I was born with it. There are 6,000 people in America with it, it’s called Angioedema.



SmSh: Yeah, what happened with that? You canceled your tour…

CM: Two days after my album came out, I had a tube in my throat and they said they were going to put me in a coma to save my lungs, so I began fighting a totally different ball game. I still went on tour and I’m better now, but I’ve been lying really low. Physically, I’ve gained a lot of weight, like 30 pounds, because the doctors were all saying I couldn’t do anything cardiovascular, and I have always ridden my bike and been a swimmer. I wasn’t on top of my phone or my emails, I had to hire an assistant. She’s now one of my best friends. I just met her at a show and after she just continued with me around the world.

My health was really bad. I didn’t know if I was going to die tomorrow and that really turned a bunch of things around for me, intellectually and spiritually. These are things you don’t learn in school. If I didn’t get sick, then maybe I wouldn’t be sticking to my guns as an individual, believing that people, many millions I’d say — how many people are there on Earth, 4 billion?

SmSh: I think 7 billion, now.

CM: OK well, I’d say there’s four billion who have to help the other three, whether that’s to be more compassionate or to learn to smile, or to ask for help. I think that everybody’s meant for greatness and success. You can do anything in this lifetime — you just have to do it. And nobody’s going to do it for you. So yeah, it taught me — the whole process of the album coming out, working so hard on it, standing up for my rights as a recording artist to my record label. So I’m really thankful that I’m alive to keep going.



SmSh: On that track “Ruin” on the latest album, there’s a lot of negative things mentioned, but the message seems positive, that there’s still hope and we can pull back and rebuild. So how do we do that — do we look towards technology, music, arts, economic liberalization?

CM: Well first… I’m not Trotsky, or Obama, and I’m not the Queen of Sheba, but you’re asking me, so, my first advice is to use as much technology as you can to open your eyes and your mind to what’s going on — what’s going on in the deep web. That means abandoning all corporate news systems and going directly to blog information sites. I know a lot of these countries — mine included — they conceal a lot of information, but there’s so much information going in and out of this country that they can’t hop on every laptop and conceal information from everybody, which is what they’re trying to do.

But I would say use technology as much as possible to gain friendships across the world globally, any kind of internet chat site, website, any kind of fucking thing you can, before the internet goes away, before shit breaks down. Take the Arab Spring, that was one of the most enlightening things to happen. To me, it defined hope. That was one of the first things in my lifetime that shone so brightly — that was the Arab Spring. You know about that, right?

SmSh: Yeah, definitely.

CM: As far as the Occupy movement and things like that, they’ve been changing and deregulating the United States Constitution, which is… [sigh] Anyway. In terms of what we should all do, it would be first information, and then just doing things in your own life personally in your own time, whether it’s meditating when you have to take a shower or bath, everybody has to take a shower or bath. Take any time you have inside when you’re alone and make amends with yourself as a human and know that the world is very small, and you are so much smaller, but your voice inside yourself is the strongest voice you will ever have.



And be creative! With everything you do. Because everything you do, whether it’s cooking, cleaning, folding, walking the dog, taking care of a child, if you apply creativity and your individuality to anything that you’re doing that is considered work, you can actually enjoy what you’re doing.

SmSh: Right, absolutely.

CM: Sorry, I’m not even gonna talk about sex slavery. That’s something that I really feel passionate about.

SmSh: So do I. Yeah.

CM: Yeah. [Falls quiet.]

SmSh: Right. So just some quick questions about the tour. When you come to China, are you going to be playing with a band, or are you playing solo this time around?

CM: No, I can’t play with the band anymore. I had 14 people on tour with me [before], two tour busses. But I kept hearing people in the front row saying: “It’s great, I love it! I love it! But when are you going to come and play solo?” I kept hearing people on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter — “We love your new thing, da-da-da… When are you going to play solo?” I was exhausting myself, just giving 1000% and singing my ass off and stuff, and really trying to empower people as much as I could with every lyric, every look I could give everybody. And I was just getting more and more exhausted. So I started playing solo again.



SmSh: But this time around, with your current tour, are you in a more positive place? Or has it been exhausting and repetitive, touring again?

CM: No, I don’t want you to think that my band shows were so exhausting that I was miserable. It was fucking amazing, I loved it. I was so happy to do them. But now it’s a different thing. I never played the way that I play now, when I play solo. For years when I played solo I’d always hide myself because I’d have this vulnerability in being alone on stage and singing these things that are very important to me.

But now, after what I went through, I’m stronger. I don’t know whether the illness is going to pop-up again, so every day I’m completely with you, with everybody. I’m trying to do the best job that I can.

SmSh: So, China — have you been here before? What do you expect?

CM: I’ve not been there before. What do I expect? I don’t like to expect things anywhere. I don’t like things pre-conceived. I mean, I expect the dim sum to be amazing. I expect the people just to be like anywhere in the world, you know? Everybody looks different, everybody talks different, but everybody is the damn same. I’ve been to the jungles of Africa with an African dude I didn’t even fucking know. He didn’t speak a damn word of English but he’s just like the guy I met last night in Portland who’s a designer living with his wife. I mean, people might look different but they’re all the same.

That’s the problem with humans, they try so hard to align themselves with their clan or group. What they don’t understand is that we’re all the same.

So what do I expect — I expect good dim sum and nice people, and a lot that I don’t know. I expect to learn. I can’t wait. And I’ve been waiting to play China for maybe 15 years. China and India, I’ve been waiting for. I’ve been to India before, but not to play, but I’ve been rooting for that. My plan was to always stay a month before and a month after, but I wasn’t able to because I’ve got a lot of shit going on in my personal life that I have to keep working on. I have to keep going. But I will be back, if I survive, which I intend on doing. I’ll be back.



SmSh: Place weighs heavily in your music, a sense of home or a lack of it. Where do you call home nowadays?

CM: I don’t really have a home right now. I have, like, places where I can stay, you know in America, Europe, Australia, South America, Japan, Taiwan, if I wanted. Eastern Europe. I’d say Poland, probably.

I feel like the Earth is my home, obviously, but I’m going to be living in New York and LA again, Atlanta, Miami. I’d like to get a place in East Berlin, these are all like roommates. I’d like to get a place in East Berlin and Detroit, and Melbourne and Paris.

SmSh: And what roots you to some place, so that you would want to call it home in the first place?

CM: Friendship, love. Someone that I love, a friend. And that’s the problem — I have friends everywhere, and none of my friends are friends with each other. I’ve been traveling since I was 23, so I have really strong connections with people all around the world that I love, that I’d love to stay with. But the cities keep going, there’s more than just one.

SmSh: So, last question, I promise.

CM: I don’t care.

SmSh: I’m sure you’re really busy.

CM: No, I’m not, I just had a car and drove from Portland.

SmSh: What were you doing in Portland?

CM: Playing shows.

SmSh: Oh, right, right.

CM: Oh yeah, I’m touring, old style. I used to tour on the Greyhound bus — you know what that is?

SmSh: Yeah, I used to take it from Los Angeles to Oakland all the time.

CM: Why did you go to Oakland?

SmSh: I have family there.

CM: Awesome. Awesome stuff.

SmSh: So you’ve been driving yourself around California?

CM: Oh, no — that’s where I bought the car, because I can tow two tons with it, almost two tons. So like, if I can’t afford my mortgage anymore, because I already have a few mortgages, and I’m going to rent all those out because — it’s a long story — but that’s why I put the money down on that thing, because really, it’s cheaper than rent. So I can tow an RV if I need to, and I can survive just traveling, that’s why I bought that car. But moving on, what was your question? Oh yeah, tour — I left New York and went down to Florida, and played all these shows, and then drove to different shows on the way up, and then drove over, and down a bit and then back up, and then I was in Seattle and then down here. Now I’m in San Francisco and tomorrow is LA. Then I go to China that night.



SmSh: So you went cross-country from East to West Coast? Driving? Yourself?

CM: Yeah, I went from New York down to Florida then back up to Boston and then back over to Chicago and then Idaho and all that stuff. But that’s what you do when you’re on tour. Went from a Greyhound to going by train, to renting a car, to getting a van or touring with somebody else. I said fuck all that, I’m going to buy this car, I’m going to drive by myself.

SmSh: Are you traveling with anyone?

CM: Yeah, I’m traveling with my friend who’s at all the shows, she was in the Cat Power Girl Band. And my friend, the girl that I met in Helsinki that asked to come on tour. She’s on tour too.

SmSh: So my last question is a bit of a… You know, I have to ask, I read in some other interviews of yours where you mention Chinese alien wars. Care to explain what that’s about?

CM: Can you say that again?

SmSh: So I read in some of your other interviews where you were talking about Chinese alien wars.

CM: Yeah. Have you ever Googled it?

SmSh: I have.

CM: Then why the hell are you asking me about it for?

SmSh: I have to ask — you said China was the country that once fended off extraterrestrial invaders…

CM: Yeah. With the ginger giants.

SmSh: Oh. I didn’t read about that.

CM: Yeah, that’s the Chinese alien wars. That was pre-dating Chinese history. There are these archaeological relics that show these alien sculptures, handcrafted sculptures. And there are these mummies, you can Google the red-haired giants. I don’t know where the giants came from, but the aliens apparently came and then the red-haired giants fought [alongside] the Chinese, or in the region that we now call China, and warded them off. I don’t know how long — a thousand years — I’m just making this stuff up, I don’t fucking know how long they fought.

Maybe I should look it up and then text you back. Every religion, all ancient cultures have associations with beings that came from the sky. That came down, and every year there’s always like a costume get-up that these people in Papua New Guinea or a tribe in Africa — I’m saying those because they’re far away from an iPhone — you know if you’re going to write this, you’ve got to understand that there’s more to this story that we don’t know, and anyway, they dress up in these costumes, far apart in the world from each other, and they dress up in these costumes that look so similar.

You can find a, what island was it, near southern India, the Maldives? It’s the same sculpture that they have in Honolulu, same sculpture, it’s like a little dude with the same look as the dudes in Papua New Guinea, the same dudes in Africa, the box-y sort of head with these large eyes. I know that I sound crazy, these are just things that I’ve learned traveling the world, talking to people who are also interested in this shit.

Yeah, it’s interesting… Anyway, so I forgot what your question was.

SmSh: No, no—you answered it completely. Thank you.



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BOOM! There you have it, Shanghai. Chan Marshall. Lovely lady. Into dim sum and aliens. Who isn't? She plays this weekend at Qianshuiwan. We've sold out of all our tickets but there will be some at the door. Get down early. Details here.

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