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April 4, 1999
Cadallaca
Attitude, community, songwriting and alter egos - Corin Tucker and Sarah Dougher tell all
By GERRY BELSHA
What do you get when you put together three sassy women, a farfisa organ, whiskey, high-heel shoes and a love for the Shangri-las? You get the best album of the last year, Introducing Cadallaca by super grrrl group Cadallaca.
"It started late one night on a rainy drunken evening with some high-heel shoes and a bottle of Old Crow," said Cadallaca guitarist Corin Tucker (Kissy). "It really just started out as a kind of drinking party actually. Dusty (Sarah Dougher) had acquired an organ and it suddenly seemed like we should start writing songs at that point."
Kissy, Dusty and Junior
CadallacaIn addition to Tucker, better known for her air-raid siren vocals and guitar work with the best band in the world, Sleater-Kinney; and Dougher, formerly of the Lookers and currently of the Crabs; Cadallaca includes drummer sts (Junior).
"I just bought this farfisa organ and had been playing around with it a little but I really wanted to play with it in a band, so I made them be my band," said Dougher. "Or they made me be in their band."
Inspired by drink, fashion and girlhoods the Shangri-las, Introducing Cadallaca is refreshingly light and honest. Steeped in the up front vocals of Dougher and the in your face drums of sts, subject matters range from love affairs, drunken nights, snowy nights and long gone 1941 lust, but are always rooted in basic fun.
"Performing with Cadallaca is a kind of out of body experience for me," said Dougher. "Part of it is that I am hyperventilating so much that I feel dizzy. Part of it involves alcohol and a lot sass. All those things combined make it very exhilarating. I get to be something I actually am, although Dusty wears a lot more product in her hair and has a lot more checkered of a past."
stephen les photoTucker as Kissy "I get to personify Kissy, who is my alter ego and there is just a sense of complete ridiculousness about Cadallaca," said Tucker, about the spirit of Cadallaca. "There is a total lack of responsibility which I really enjoy. I love the fact Sleater-Kinney inspires other people and they look up to us, but I think that it is hard to feel like you are always behaving responsibly. I think rock & roll is so much more about doing whatever comes instinctual and Cadallaca is a prime example."
What Cadallaca is also a prime example of is the thriving music scenes of Olympia and Portland. A scene in which it seems that everyone has been in a band with everyone else at one time or another.
"We are extremely lucky that we have an original scene where people can say 'I want to start a band and I want to do it this way,' and people say 'oh, this is really interesting,'" said Tucker. "There is a sense of respect toward people with artistic ideas. There is almost a challenge to do something different."
"A large part of it has to do with a cooperative ethic that creates opportunities for both the production and distribution of music," said Dougher. "The structures are in place in a strong way that are not in place in other cities. "
Both Tucker and Dougher believe that Cadallaca is an outlet that is very healthy and beneficial to their other projects, helping to extend their musical abilities by trying new things and new ways of creating music.
"Sarah and I write together very quickly," said Tucker. "We almost have the same ideas about music and the same personalities so it is easy for us to help each other along. Carrie (Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney guitar hero) and I almost have sort of antagonistic qualities toward each other that we draw each other out. We compliment each other while Sarah and I are more alike."
"In the Lookers I wrote the songs and then brought them to the band," said Dougher. "With Cadallaca it is a super collaboration. We barely even talk when it happens. We just play. We jam, which is I guess normal rock music."
What resulted from the "super collaboration" is an album full of intricate harmonies and swapping of lead vocals. Also interesting is the interplay between Tucker's guitar and Dougher's farfisa.
"The organ and guitar are so vigorously intertwined that I can't sit down and play a Cadallaca song on the organ and make it sound like a Cadallaca song," said Dougher.
tae won yu photoDougher as Dusty Another key to the organic feel of Cadallaca's music is the continuing progression of Tucker's singing. It's been a long time since her screaming vocals in the band Heavens to Betsy. Don't be fooled, Tucker still sings with a passion that makes her rock & roll's best gutter snipe since Joe Strummer, but now she sometimes shows restraint.
""I have always had an attitude that music should be very honest, said Tucker. "The way that I sang (in Heavens to Betsy) was very honest to what was going on in my life then. The way I sing now is honest to my experience as a person now. Also part of it is I can't scream my brains out all the time. I sort of do anyway, but I also want to have longevity."
The restraint has led to a sort of freedom that has paid dividends not only with the more carefree songs of Cadallaca, but with the darker moodier areas touched on in some of the songs on the latest Sleater-Kinney album The Hot Rock.
So the mod chicks, who got together for fun and made the best album of 1998, have temporarily gone back to their respective corners. Tucker to Sleater-Kinney and the sometimes heavy burden of being in the best band in the world, and Dougher to work on her upcoming solo release this summer. But with plans for a new Cadallaca record set for sometime later this year Kissy, Dusty and Junior know that there will always be more nights of high heels and Old Crow. And fun.
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