Paco Cathcart - Down On Them (2025)

Though my music has often involved some amount of collaboration, this is the first time I’ve made an whole record with one band, and with a more traditional rock instrumentation (in the last “Cradle Band” incarnation, a kind of drone-dance trio that existed circa 2017-19, I played exclusively mbira, and I focused more on my dance moves than on vocal harmonies). The intricate arrangements on this record are the results of patient collaboration between bassist Miriam Elhajli, keyboardist Ellie Shannon, drummer Bailey Wollowitz, and myself. They developed slowly through weekly practice and live performance, particularly on a 26 show cross-country tour in the summer of ’23 that led into the Autumn recording sessions.

I knew I needed a group of strong players who could also sing harmony to perform the new music I was writing in ’22-’23 and achieve this heavy, stormy sound that I had in mind. However, I badly wanted to avoid just throwing together a group of hired guns from the local scene to play a few shows and cut a record. I wanted a band. I love being in bands. Always have. When I started getting into music as a kid, the idea of being in a band was more or less the same thing as the idea of playing music itself. It was only later, once I’d unlocked the home-recording process as something that could be experimental and generative, that the idea of being a “solo” artist entered my consciousness at all.

I sensed it as any child can sense it- something important happens when the voices blend, when the band plays together. The band is a totem of our mysteries, of our potential energy, and of our root needs: family, ego-loss, recognition of the other, play. The band is real alchemy, real magic. The music that touches deepest, the music that makes you recognize yourself in it, is always made by the band. The musician always without a band is like one who only eats alone, or only prays alone.

There is a powerful intimacy created through the shared ritual of consistent rehearsal, an intimacy that you can only cultivate through slow growth, by playing together over a long period of time. The over time part is key, because over time life gets into the music, change and growth get into the music, the highs and lows all get into the music. Our band took a while. Ellie and I met and started playing together in the Fall of ’22. I met Miriam in January of ’23. She joined shortly after and for a while we played trio and developed the vocals. Finally Bailey joined on drums. We did the cross-country tour as a trio in July and August of ’23, rehearsed as a quartet in September, then tracked Down on Them in October. Every day we went to the studio it rained. We went back a week later to track vocals and it rained again. It was inevitable- the rain chose the colors of the album as we made it. By then the music was heavy like clouds.