Cat Power

Charlyn Marie "Chan" Marshall ( ; born January 21, 1972), better known by her stage name Cat Power, is an American singer-songwriter. Cat Power was originally the name of her first band, but has become her stage name as a solo artist.

Born in Atlanta, Marshall was raised throughout the southern United States and began performing in local bands in Atlanta in the early 1990s. After opening for Liz Phair in 1993, she worked with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, with whom she recorded her first two albums, '' Dear Sir'' (1995) and '' Myra Lee'' (1996), on the same day in 1994. In 1996, she signed with Matador Records, and released a third album of new material with Shelley and Foljahn, '' What Would the Community Think''. Following this, she released the critically acclaimed '' Moon Pix'' (1998), recorded with members of Dirty Three, and '' The Covers Record'' (2000), a collection of sparsely arranged cover songs.

After a brief hiatus she released ''You Are Free'' (2003), featuring guest musicians Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder, followed by the soul-influenced '' The Greatest'' (2006), recorded with numerous Memphis studio musicians. A second album of cover tracks, ''Jukebox'', was released in 2008. In 2012 she released the self-produced ''Sun'', which debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200, the highest-charting album of her career to date.

Critics have noted the constant evolution of Cat Power's sound, with a mix of punk, folk and blues on her earliest albums, and elements of soul and other genres more prevalent in her later material.

Early life

Charlyn Marie Marshall was born January 21, 1972, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Charlie Marshall, a blues musician and pianist, and Myra Lee Marshall ( Russell). She has one older sister, Miranda ("Mandy"). Her maternal grandfather was of Native American ancestry. Her parents divorced in 1979 and remarried shortly thereafter. Her mother remarried and had a son, Lenny, and the family traveled around often because of her stepfather's profession.

Marshall attended ten different schools throughout the Southern U.S. in Greensboro; Bartlett and Memphis and throughout Georgia and South Carolina. At times she was left in the care of her grandmother. She was not allowed to buy records when she was growing up, but she listened to her stepfather's record collection, which included artists Otis Redding, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Rolling Stones, as well as her parents' records, which included Black Flag, Sister Sledge, and Barry White. In sixth grade, she adopted the nickname Chan (pronounced "Shawn"), which she would later use professionally. When she was 13, she listened to the Smiths, the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. She had to save up to buy cassettes and the first one she got was a record by the Misfits. As a high schooler in Atlanta, she saw shows by punk bands including a Cramps show at which the Flat Duo Jets opened. She has referenced multiple times the influence of Dex Romweber from the Flat Duo Jets, and she bought her first guitar because it looked like his black and white Silvertone. At age 16, Marshall dropped out of high school and became estranged from her mother, having no further contact with her until she was 24.

Religion was a large part of Marshall's upbringing; her father was a Jehovah's Witness, though she attended Southern Baptist churches with her grandmother, where she began singing while learning hymns.

Career

1992–1995: Beginnings

Marshall's first instrument was a 1950s Silvertone guitar, which she taught herself to play. While working in a pizzeria, she began playing music in Atlanta in the late-1980s with Glen Thrasher, Marc Moore, Damon Moore and Fletcher Liegerot, who would get together for jam sessions in a basement. The group were booked for a show and had to come up with a name quickly; after seeing a man wearing a Caterpillar trucker cap that read: "Cat Diesel Power", Marshall chose Cat Power as the name of the band.

While in Atlanta, Marshall played her first live shows as support to her friends' bands, including Magic Bone and Opal Foxx Quartet. In a 2007 interview, she explained that the music itself was more experimental and that playing shows was often an opportunity for her and her friends "to get drunk and take drugs". A number of her local peers became entrenched in heroin use. After the death of her boyfriend, and the subsequent loss of her best friend to AIDS, Marshall relocated to New York City in 1992 with Glen Thrasher. A new boyfriend helped her get a job in a restaurant.

Thrasher introduced her to New York's free jazz and experimental music scene. After attending a concert by Anthony Braxton, she gave her first New York show of improvisational music at a warehouse in Brooklyn. One of her shows during this period was as the support act to Man or Astro-man? and consisted of her playing a two-string guitar and singing the word "no" for 15 minutes. Around this time, she met the band God Is My Co-Pilot, who assisted with the release of her first single, "Headlights", in a limited run of 500 copies on their Making of Americans label.

Marshall recorded simultaneously her first two albums '' Dear Sir'' and '' Myra Lee'' in December 1994 in a small basement studio near Mott Street in New York City, with guitarist Tim Foljahn and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley; Marshall and Shelley had initially met after she played a show opening for Liz Phair in 1993. A total of 20 songs were recorded in a single day by the trio, all of which were split into two records, making up ''Dear Sir'' and ''Myra Lee'', released respectively in October 1995 and March 1996. Although ''Dear Sir'' is considered Marshall's debut album, it is more the length of an EP.

1996–2003: Early Matador releases

In 1996, Marshall signed to Matador Records. In September of that year, she released her third album, '' What Would the Community Think'', which she recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, in February 1996. The album was produced by Shelley and again featured Shelley and Foljahn as backing musicians, and spawned a single and music video, " Nude as the News" about the abortion she had at the age of 20. Critics cited the album as evidence of her maturation as a singer and songwriter from the "dense and cathartic" material of her first two releases.

After the release of ''What Would the Community Think'', Marshall took a trip to South Africa. After this, she left New York City and moved to Portland, Oregon, where she found temporary employment as a babysitter. In the spring of 1997, Marshall relocated with her then-boyfriend, musician Bill Callahan, to a rural farmhouse in Prosperity, South Carolina. After experiencing a hypnogogic nightmare while alone in the farmhouse, Marshall wrote six new songs that would go on to make up the bulk of her following album, '' Moon Pix'' (1998), which she recorded at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, Australia, with backing musicians Mick Turner and Jim White of the Australian band Dirty Three. ''Moon Pix'' was well received by critics, and along with an accompanying music video for the song " Cross Bones Style", helped her gain further recognition. ''Rolling Stone'' would later describe it as her 'breakthrough' record.

In 1999, Marshall performed in a series of shows where she provided musical accompaniment to the silent movie '' The Passion of Joan of Arc''. The shows combined original material and covers, some of which would be released on Marshall's fifth album, '' The Covers Record'' in 2000. The songs were recorded during two sessions in the summer of 1998 and fall of 1999. Additionally, she performed eleven covers during a Peel session broadcast on June 18, 2000, that included own interpretations of Bob Dylan's " Hard Times in New York Town" and Oasis

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