A good friend of mine once described contemporary folk artist Catie Curtis as a white Tracy Chapman.
Students have a chance to feel the power of Curtis' diverse messages when she returns tomorrow to the Ark.
Curtis, a social worker prior to the release of her first album "From Years to Hours," said in a recent interview with The Michigan Daily that she "found the work pretty satisfying, doing home visits with the elderly. It was an opportunity to provide some pretty concrete support systems for frail, low-income, elderly people. But the whole time, the goal has really been to do music when I felt I was ready. Music has been the constant thread throughout my life."
Curtis described how she gets ideas for the socially conscious leanings her music oftentimes takes, saying, "I get a lot of material from really personal experiences I've had with people or sometimes just reading a book or newspaper - something that touches you personally. You know, we have our experiences and our imagination, and in the realm of all that comes an endless play of songs. Still, my relationship to my songs change as my life experiences do."
From her debut album, songs like "Hole in the Bucket," which Curtis wrote "because of the frustrations of working in social services," give her feelings about the way society wrongly treats its members at times. But her music can also have personal leanings. "Grandmother's Name," the tale of an elderly woman dying with Alzheimer's disease, exemplifies this.
"My grandmother died a couple of years ago with Altzheimer's, but I wrote this song before then," Curtis said. "I thought I could get through the funeral because I'd sung this song so many times. But I was crying, and everyone else was crying. It was awful."
Curtis, whose latest album, "Truth from Lies" - is also her first release under EMI records, looks forward to how this new partnership will change the way in which future songs are written and performed.
"I think that in the next record we'll step back from simplistic music and allow other kinds of instrumentalization to happen," she said. "But I think I can still make my music intimate. My songs will remain lyric oriented. I'm not going to let my soul get buried in this whole alternative thing, but I do feel there is room for experimentation."
Curtis plans to perform songs from both her prior albums, as well as new music she's putting together for her next album.