Out indie pop artist Catey Shaw talks art, labels, and why she hearts Brooklyn.
A transplant from Virginia Beach to Brooklyn N.Y., pop singer Catey Shaw has been transformed by New York City into the artist she always wanted to be. After spending two years studying painting at art school and dropping out because she couldn’t afford tuition, Shaw has applied her artist’s instinct to singing and songwriting.
But the former Fine Arts major, who worked mostly in self-portraiture, hasn’t really put down the brush. Her self-expression extends also to music, whether it’s learning to play the ukulele or busking on New York’s subway platforms, or writing and conceiving her latest music video. The goal is self-expression, a bit of storytelling—and always communicating with others.
“Really, what I crave and strive for all the time is to communicate with people. Songwriting definitely puts me in a more vulnerable position than painting because I’m using concrete language and describing things.”
At 23 years of age this independent, left-of-center singer is taking the risks necessary to put herself out there. “Being an independent artist right now is really working for me. I have a great team that is keeping everything in place and getting everything going.” While she might lack commercial radio airplay, her online fans are making up for it.
“They have really just made my heart sing. On Twitter there are people who have been following me for a while. People who catch on and see me after a show. It’s a connection that I think everyone who is an artist is searching for, it’s what you live for and strive for—it’s to beat this loneliness we have and to feel connected to other people. I’m not making a lot of money so I have to have something to keep me going and that’s definitely it.”
Singing comes naturally to Shaw, who has been singing since she was in middle school. “In high school I did different musicals that we had, but it was more of a hobby for me at the time. I hadn’t explored music as a medium. It took me getting a ukulele (one of them was left in my house when I was eighteen), picking it up and starting to write a song.
It became a bit closer to me. I was busking in New York and people really stopped and cared and then I met my manager and it became clear that this was something worth pursuing and that I wanted to share with people. It was an effective tool to communicate with.”
There seemed no better way to reach people than to busk in the subways of NYC, and Shaw picked the smaller 23rd Street station with a single platform, as her first stage. “I made less money but I could hear myself think.
When you have people that are in the middle of a commute who are coming from somewhere or going somewhere and having their day and you sing and connect with them…how exciting it is to reach someone like that? That’s kind of the beauty of it: how tough of an audience it is,” says Shaw. “It is really kind of boot camp, and how tough it is came in handy when I started playing with a band in a venue.”
New York certainly helped Shaw toughen up and hone her musical chops. “Growing up I always wanted to be an artist of some kind, just be creative, and New York is this sort of Mecca I needed to make my pilgrimage to as an artist. Taking that step and leaving Virginia and coming here and going into this great crazy thing, I think it really allowed me to become the person I needed to become.”
But settling into New York as a millennial isn’t a bed of roses, as anyone who watches “Girls” knows. After living in student dorms on the Lower East Side, the East Village, couch surfing here and there, and stints in Astoria, Jersey City and back, she finally landed in Brooklyn and “all the stars aligned for me. It just felt like a home, like a neighborhood I could be a part of. All the people are just … there’s something different about Brooklyn.”
It’s a good fit for Shaw, so much so that she named her second EP Brooklyn, as an homage to her new home, and also her single “Brooklyn Girls.” “The sound that we had been going for made more sense after we wrote that song. It all just seemed to go together. All of the songs were written while I was living here and they’re sort of this new picture of myself that I have.”
Catey Shaw is still evolving, still working on her self portrait in music. Her voice is her medium and it’s as strong and colorful and complex as anything she painted. Some journalists have compared her voice to Billie Holiday’s, but Shaw is no mimic. “I sing in a way that pleases me and feels good.
The reason any of us sings is joy. We walk around the apartment singing to ourselves, it’s not to imitate or to replicate another person’s voice as it is to bring yourself joy. My voice developed in that way of singing to myself to bring me joy. But I did always love the artist Billie Holiday.”
What comes out of Shaw’s 5’6” frame is “kind of like a fingerprint,” she says. “I don’t want to take too much credit for it. It’s kind of this thing that I’m lucky I get to do.” Still waiting for her big break Shaw is on the right track. She is encouraged by the massive success of female pop singers like Taylor Swift and Meghan Trainor.
“What is encouraging to me is the spectrum of music that is out there now, with one thing completely different to the next. The audience is wide open right now, people are very open to different kinds of music.”
They’re also open to queer lyrics and scenarios now, such as that featured in Shaw’s most lesbian song, “Night Go Slow.”
“It’s a love song,” she says of the clip that features two girls, Jenny and Dylan, whose entire world is defined by each other and what they do together. “Everything disappears and you forget all the stuff that’s happening when you’re with someone. You don’t worry about anyone but them, you don’t hear your cell phone or the jets going by, you don’t care about anything but them.”
“I definitely see myself in both of the characters, both of them are wearing things from my life as props. The character of Jenny who drives the truck is more vulnerable in the way that she views love and the things that she’s looking for. She’s looking for a companion to help her strive for something greater.
Whereas Dylan is seeking adventure, is kind of an opportunist, and taking every chance she can to break through the chains that bind her. Taking both of those stories is a way we can look at love and accept love through others. I found that a great place to start putting some symbolism into it.”
When it comes to Shaw’s own love life she’s happy to share that she’s “in love with a beautiful woman.” Just as the labels of artist and musician are “pretty fluid” for Shaw, so is the label of lesbian and bisexual. She doesn’t really feel that she needs to classify herself in that way, but rather be in the moment, and love every moment of it.