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CATHARINE WOOD Interview
WCS is a membership of talented, fun loving yet serious musicians with a supportive and collaborative nature. Members span all walks of life and a variety of musical genres which truly builds a strong diverse community. I love chatting with members, managers and fellow board members to find out what makes them tick, where they came from and how they started their musical career. SO with that in mind, I decided to start blogging about who IS West Coast Songwriters. WCS is all about YOU....
Today... West Coast Songwriters is CATHARINE WOOD -- our very own manager for the Hollywood Chapter. She has some exciting news to share with you....and I would just like to congratulate Catharine for her fabulous work for WCS and her exciting news... read on!
How did you get your start?
Who are your major influences?
What sparks your passion to write?
Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Where do you find the best place to write your songs, at home, restaurant, coffee house etc…?
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
What made you join WCS?
What made you decide to become Manager of the Hollywood Chapter and How have you grown the Chapter?
Anything else you’d like to add?
Yes! I just found out that I’m being featured on the NARIP(National Association for Record Industry Professionals) website as this week’s “Featured Member”…NARIP is an outstanding resource to music-focused entertainment creatives and professionals alike and I highly recommend checking out their offerings in your area. If you’d like to hear more of my work and learn more about my company please visit my website: Planetwood Productions.
Today... West Coast Songwriters is CATHARINE WOOD -- our very own manager for the Hollywood Chapter. She has some exciting news to share with you....and I would just like to congratulate Catharine for her fabulous work for WCS and her exciting news... read on!
How did you get your start?
Start’s a big word…I’ve had a number of “starts” over the years…like when I was twelve and took guitar lessons for two weeks and quit because I couldn’t read music…Or like when I started writing music in 1998, after I’d taught myself guitar by ear and finally became coordinated enough to play and sing at the same time -- lyrics and melodies started flowing. My first real recording “start” was with a record I produced eleven years ago with a handful blues vets up in Carmel, CA. I was the featured vocalist on that album with some sensational players like B3 great, Danny Abrams and Monterey Jazz Festival favorite Bob Phillips…In 2003 I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my own songwriting and engineering aspirations in a more serious way – when I graduated #1 in my class from the Los Angeles Recording School in Hollywood and was approached by John Bolen at Play Studios in Santa Monica to come work for him alongside Chris Hildrew and Matt Downs…engineering on major ad campaigns in 2005...I’d have to say that was my REAL start in the business…
As typical and/or corny as it sounds coming from a musical family; I’d have to say my parents and grandmother in particular. My grandmother played wonderful jazz piano by ear and taught me some basics when I was about six years old that have never left me. My mother’s a classically trained choral vocalist and was a composition major in college. I remember lying under our Steinway Concert Grand in my early teens when she was composing a lot. My father’s a great appreciator; classical, opera, jazz, old school R&B…and a terrific athlete. I think a lot of that inherent athletic rhythm crosses over into music and I feel very lucky to have been born with many aptitudes that help allow music to be a great joy for me. I have a broad-ranging appreciation – from Beethoven to Brubeck, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Carole King, Joni Mitchell…My favorite L.A. band is The Rescues. My favorite L.A. Indie Artist is Amy Kuney. These artists exemplify my idea of really quality contemporary songwriting and execution on all levels.
I’ve been described as an “exposed nerve” by close friends…it doesn’t take much for me to get excited about something to write about. If lyrics are involved, I try not to rely on Life Circumstance to fuel the fire – but it does happen often. I recently lost my little brother unexpectedly to cancer and I can safely say that an experience like that does and will take me more quickly to a Creative Place for the rest of my life…like it or not…so I choose to use it as a tool to take me deep, honestly and to the most connected universal Musical place I can go to. When composing strictly instrumental pieces, music is my language and unique melodies and harmonies come quickly for me; composing is fun for me and that in and of itself is a spark.
I’ve recently had the amazing fortune of bumping into a dream collaborative scenario. In February I went into the studio to track drums for 6 new Catharine Wood songs with Soultone Cymbals Artist and Hiptrix Endorsed, Paloma Estevez.
The work she did tailoring drums parts for my songs was so tasteful and bang-on, we’ve subsequently ended up working together on a number of instrumental pieces for TV and Film placement opportunities…it’s a dream come true for me as a melody whiz…to click so well with such an incredibly versatile rhythm player who also has a fundamental, natural understanding of “right” musically. We “hear” very similarly, work very fast and very well together. A priori moments happen often in the studio and I couldn’t ask for a more in-sync musical partner.
I write anywhere/everywhere. On restaurant napkins. My hand. Into the voice recorder on my phone. I love to write in the car. If lyrics are involved, I love coming up with a great chorus title/melody…and if its “sticky” I’ll hash out verses…a cappella…and then sit down at the piano or on guitar after the basic melody is established. Or sometimes entire phrases come out attached to melodies. I have an upcoming single, "Call to Arms" which wrote itself in a dream. Lyrics, melody, the whole shebang. I’ve been writing a lot of instrumental pieces lately – which is a completely different process. The instrumental work I’m doing right now is layered and fairly free…so a lot of it is on-the-spot composition…writing directly as production is happening…which I find incredibly fun.
Here. In Los Angeles. Doing what I’m doing right now as a composer and producer but making a lot more money at it ;-) I have a cabin in Colorado that I spend a month out of the year writing at. I love to travel and would like to be spending more time “getting inspired” by Bordeaux, Tuscany, Spain…you get the idea. I’d love to score a film one day. I had an opportunity to work with Mateo Messina (Juno composer) early on and it was a thrill to have the chance to be around that level of extreme creativity; relating music to film.
I joined WCS in 2002 after I’d been writing songs for about four years and after having produced two albums. At the time, I’d heard about the “Northern California Songwriters Association” from one of my mother’s college friends, Harn Soper…I’d started writing in 1998 with no formal study and wanted to get more serious about learning The Craft. It was after a very inspirational workshop at Steve Seskin’s house that I moved down to Los Angeles in 2003. That workshop sealed the deal for me and I couldn’t wait to get down here. In 2004 the now-called “West Coast Songwriters” found its way down to Los Angeles with the song screenings – and I got much more involved with the Hollywood Chapter then - in its infancy here.
In 2005 Mike Rofe started up the “open mic” events at the Pig-N-Whistle for WCS…and I volunteered to do the live sound for that monthly event for a couple seasons. Eventually I became more involved in a managerial capacity; co-managing both the open mics – and the song-screenings. After years of building the Chapter here in Hollywood, Mike, who was working at Warner/Chappell by then, was ready to move on and I stepped up to continue building the foundation. Membership was starting to grow but we’d had some trouble with consistency in venues…so I took the “coffee shop” singer/songwriter vibe we’d historically had here in Hollywood and moved it to a residency at Genghis Cohen. JT Presents has been wonderful to work with for our booking. We’re nearing the end of our second season at Genghis and there’s been a jump in not only attendance, but a new level of seriousness with our writers. Everybody’s been bringing their “A Game”…people are beginning to collaborate with each other…and we’re consistently have a fun nights of music each showcase (second Wednesdays each month with pre-event signup). This season we also have established a monthly Works In Progress event…and coming soon…our song-screenings will be revived – with an exciting upcoming screener…who shall remain nameless until we’ve locked the date in. Next season I hope to continue with our residency at Genghis Cohen as well as offer a fall and spring “mixer”/networking opportunity for our members and prospective members. We’ve had a good handful of really solid volunteers step up in the last year to spread the volunteer duties out for the Hollywood Chapter and that’s been a tremendous help.
I’ve also been working with local educators to create networking and educational opportunities for our members. On May 22nd, we’ve got the Eagle Rock Spring Songwriters Retreat presented by KC Song Studio. Taught by a former Berklee College of Music instructor, the daylong workshop is going to be very informative and fun – in a beautiful setting. There are a limited number of seats still available…enrolling now with discounts for West Coast Songwriters Members.
Yes! I just found out that I’m being featured on the NARIP(National Association for Record Industry Professionals) website as this week’s “Featured Member”…NARIP is an outstanding resource to music-focused entertainment creatives and professionals alike and I highly recommend checking out their offerings in your area. If you’d like to hear more of my work and learn more about my company please visit my website: Planetwood Productions.
