Nov. 18, 2009 - Issue #735: Parkland Conference 2009

The Cat Empire: On the road again

The Cat Empire is a happy road dog

Seeing the world from the window of a tour bus is both exhilarating and boring, a mix of highs and lows that are sometimes tough to deal with. The "road" album is one way that many artists choose to deal with the mixed emotions that come with being on seemingly endless tours, and Australia's Cat Empire are no different. The group's most recent studio album, 2007's So Many Nights, dealt with life on the road as a way for the musicians to deal with the amount of traveling they had done.
"There was a period we'd come off a lot of traveling and a lot of touring and living on a tour bus. It seemed Ithat the way to process it was to write songs. So you have a funny mix of really lonely songs and really manic upbeat songs that seemed to embody the experience of that time of living on a tour bus and going from one city to the next," explains percussionist and vocalist Felix Riebl. "It's an emotionally extreme kind of lifestyle—you go from big audiences and a lot of gratification and a lot of love form a crowd each night mixed with a complete dislocation from a sense of home."
The manic side of touring—being in front of a appreciative crowd each night—is the side of life that Cat Empire wanted to capture on its most recent album, Live on Earth. As Riebl explains, putting together a cohesive album from a significant number of live recordings was a difficult process, but one that allowed him and his band mates to relive some of the experiences that passed them by while they were living on the road.
"There was probably about 50 shows that we had to choose from and sometimes we had to choose between three or four versions, and we'd just put them up against each other—it kind of just worked itself out with a lot of listening," he says. "One of the interesting things about it is that a lot of those years on the road were a blur of going from one show to the next and one state of mind to the next, and it was only years later sitting down with a cup of tea after a few nights off, re-listening to them brought back a lot of memories and a lot of things I'd forgotten about." V

Fri, Nov 20 (8 pm)
The Cat Empire
Starlite Room, $25

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