Folksinger Catie Curtis has done it all, musically. She started in Saco, Maine, where she was born, singing and playing (the guitar) the music of folk legends like James Taylor, and evolved into a folk music legend in her own right. In high school, and especially at Brown University, she found an appreciative, supportive audience, where she began “peppering” her performances with her own “stuff.” “As a teenager and college student, I loved the directness of a singer with a guitar and a story to tell,” she said.
“Doors kept opening. People were coming to see me,” Catie said, pondering her star-bound trajectory. She acknowledged that hers was an “unlikely career,” because although she “is a people person,” she is also quite shy, as is evident in asking her to talk about herself. At the same time, her career has been based on a “primary relationship between me and my fans.”
Increasingly in demand at clubs like Club Passim in Cambridge and similar performance venues across the country, Catie was playing at the Bottom Line in New York City — where Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt have also been headliners — when several scouts from EMI Records introduced themselves and offered her a recording contract. It was a classic discovery. Since then, she has made 14 recordings and performed all over the United States and Europe. One of her tours in the United Kingdom was in support of country and folk music legend Mary Chapin Carpenter.
As a mark of her appeal and her fame, Catie was invited to play four holiday concerts at the White House for the Obamas and their guests. She invited three “of the most talented musicians I know to join me — Elana Arian, Ingrid Graudins, and the late John Jennings. After the the gig, we’d zip over to a studio and play the songs again.” The recordings are available on CD as A Catie Curtis Christmas and are the basis of her holiday shows.
After twenty-five years of touring and playing her own music and songs, she realized “that I lost the fire for doing it full time. I was tired of the traveling and the constant need to promote myself.” As a person for whom human relationships are a prime interest, Catie decided to “try out a new chapter that would offer me new challenges,” and returned to school to become a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, with an office in Newton, the community where she has lived for sixteen years. Catie chose to live in Newton because of its excellent schools — she has two children — and because of its beauty and its people.
Performance is still important to her, and she still plays ten to twelve New England-based concerts a year, which she enjoys especially now that she has struck a balance in her life. On Friday, February 16th, Catie will be joined by singer-song writer Rose Polenzi for a concert of ”wintery/holiday songs” as well as fan favorites at The Allen House in West Newton. “For me holidays are not just about the sacred or the secular — it’s about the feeling of love and possibility,” she said.
