Hitting Sixes

Sydney-based singer-songwriter Catherine Traicos has an unusual backstory to her humble musical beginnings. A classically trained pianist, self-taught guitarist and daughter of a national cricketer, she was destined for ambitious heights at an early age. Immigrating with her family to Western Australia from Zimbabwe in 1998 to escape political unrest, the adversities now seem a lifetime ago as she hits the road spruiking her new record, featuring some of her most personal and intimate songs to date.

The youngest daughter of John Traicos, a cricketer who represented Zimbabwe at the highest level and played a vital bowling role in the country's defeat of Australia at the 1983 World Cup, Traicos grew up surrounded by strong role models. Inspired to chase her dreams, she chose the arts. “It was a big part of my life,” she says of her family. “I grew up feeling I could do anything because dad was a test cricketer and a lawyer and mum was an artist and a teacher. That gave me a lot of freedom. I remember as a kid, everyone would say what they wanted to be when they grow up and I always said I wanted to be an artist.”

Exposed to classical music at a young age through piano lessons, Traicos later took up guitar, inspired by the greats – Elvis Presley and The Beatles. “I love folk music,” she says of her primary influences. “I'm a huge fan of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie and I love the blues. I love some country, but I'm not a die-hard country fan. I would consider Elvis country, but they don't at the Country Music Hall Of Fame which I recently visited,” she jokes. Having shared the stage with Beth Orton and M.Ward, in May Traicos joined American indie folk band The Mountain Goats on their sold-out Australian tour, a series of shows she describes as amazing. “They're such lovely guys. They're really professional, they do their job well and they love doing it. It was so inspiring to see that.”

This month Traicos will launch In Another Life, stepping back in solo mode and delivering an organic and personal record. “All of the songs came from poems I wrote a while ago and I stumbled across recently,” she says of the writing process. “The first one in the book was In Another Life. It was a really strange thing. I'm not a writing type of person. This was a point in my life when I was in a very lonely place and I must have really found an outlet in writing. I can hardly remember writing those poems and they're all so neatly written and I'm not a neat writer, so it was really strange. It felt like I was looking at someone else's work almost. So In Another Life works out really well because that was in another life of mine, just so different from now.”

Recorded with Nick Huggins at his pop-up Pocket Full Of Stones studio, Traicos describes the process as natural and says Huggins' affinity with percussion instruments gave the album a new dimension. “We wanted to make sounds that emulated loops, so we would make loops with acoustic instruments, things that we found, or beat along to the whole song in a loop manner. We used a broken turntable that still revolved and attached lots of things to it. It randomly hit different things, but would do it at an interesting pace.”

The album, her fourth, will be released on her own label An Ocean Awaits, a passion project she co-runs with manager Gawain Davies. “We're a small label and only have three acts signed at the moment, but they're all doing really well so that's good. We put out music that we really think can do well and music that we really love.” In Another Life seems then a perfect fit.

Catherine Traicos will be playing the following shows:

Thursday 25 October - The Green Room Lounge, Sydney NSW
Sunday 28 October - Worker's Club, Melbourne VIC
Thursday 15 November - Ellington Jazz Club, Perth WA