Natasha Thirsk is a busy Vancouver musician. She started getting her band-hands dirty with The Dirtmitts. Currently she is singing and guitarist for her catchy pop project Catlow (something like if Blonde Redhead took up some Garbage and became Breeders) and scoring for TV commercials when she can. I met up with Thirsk one afternoon in Vancouver, just before she rushed off to a family member’s birthday gathering. We sipped martinis as I wondered aloud if she considered Catlow to be her solo project and if so, why she didn’t use her own name.
“It started out like that”, she admits, “I did most of the record myself, I did it with a couple of producers in L.A. and they played the other instruments. I kinda just wanted to make it like a collective ‘cause it was so hard with my last band to keep four core members. Life happens and people do different things and it’s really hard to get people who can tour. But I just never wanted to go by my own name; I just thought it was a little bit cheesy.
But Catlow?
“It’s an old movie from the 70s”, she explains, “With Yul Brynner and Leonard Nimoy and apparently [the latter] has a naked scene in it. I haven’t seen it. It’s a book by Louise L’Amour and I honestly haven’t read the book or seen the movie. I just was doing all this research on the internet for names and came up with 200 names and we kinda passed it around and [Catlow] was everybody’s favourite.”
Catlow isn’t all Thirsk does. TV commercial scoring keeps her busy during her sporadic off time. “I got on with a company in Toronto to do TV commercials and stuff like that. I scored, with a friend of mine, Brian Carson, a Toyota Camry commercial this year. My first commercial. It helps to have the classical background and I’ve always wanted to do film scoring. Even before I started playing rock’n’roll, I wanted to score film. I was supposed to go to university to become a concert pianist but then I found out you have to practice eight hours a day.”
One interesting thing is her view on I-Pods. “I’m against them for some reason. I won’t download a song. I like to own records too. I love records. I’d rather have all records. I have an old ‘50s record player that was my grandma’s. [I love the sound]; it’s all crackly.”
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