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Cat Power is the stage name of American singer/songwriter Charlyn "Chan" Marshall (born Charlyn Marie Marshall on 21 January 1972). She is known for her minimalist style, sparse guitar and piano playing, and ethereal vocals.
Early life
The daughter of divorced parents, Chan (pronounced "Shawn") Marshall was born in Georgia. Marshall`s father, Charlie, is a blues musician and itinerant pianist[1]. Her childhood involved much upheaval, with Marshall living throughout the Southern United States (Greensboro, North Carolina; Bartlett, Tennessee; and Georgia and South Carolina), back and forth between parents and her grandmother. In interviews she has openly discussed her childhood and stated that the constant traveling prepared her for the touring life of a professional musician.
After dropping out of high school, she started performing under the name Cat Power while in Atlanta, backed by musicians Glen Thrasher, Marc Moore, and others. While in Atlanta, Marshall played her first live shows as support to her friends` bands, including Magic Bone and Opal Foxx Quartet. Due to her close relationships with the various people involved she has stated that her involvement in music at this time was primarily a social interest rather than an artistic one. She also stated in a 2007 interview for Soft Focus that the music itself was more experimental and that playing shows was often an opportunity to get drunk and for her friends to take drugs.
[edit] 1990s (Dear Sir – Moon Pix)
In 1992 she moved to New York City with Glen Thrasher. It was Thrasher who introduced her to New York`s free-jazz and experimental music scene. In particular she cites a concert by Anthony Braxton with giving her the confidence to perform in public. Her first New York show was at a warehouse in Brooklyn and she has described her early New York shows as "more improvisational".[2] 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.[3] Around this time she made the acquaintance of God Is My Co-Pilot, a relationship that resulted in them releasing her first single Headlights in a limited run of 500 copies on their Making of Americans label.
In 1994 she opened for Liz Phair in New York. In attendance were Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, who encouraged her to record, and played on her first two albums, 1995`s Dear Sir and 1996`s Myra Lee, the latter taking its name from Marshall`s mother. Both albums were recorded in New York on the same day in December 1994 and display a lack of conventional song structures possibly influenced by the experimental music that Thrasher had introduced her to. In 1996 she was signed to Matador Records, and released her third album, What Would the Community Think, which spawned a single and music video, "Nude as the News".
In late 1996, following a three-month tour co-headlining with the band Guv`ner in support of the release of What Would the Community Think, Marshall disappeared from the music scene, initially working as a baby sitter in Portland, Oregon and then moving to a farmhouse in Prosperity, South Carolina with then boyfriend Bill Callahan. The plan was to permanently retire from public performance but during a sleepless night resulting from a nightmare, Marshall wrote several new songs. These songs would make up the bulk of Moon Pix. The record
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Spokesperson for a Chanel jewelry line (2006).
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