Since before she started writing out her ABCs or learning how to spell, junior Catherine Coffey has known and loved music.
“I remember being really little and sitting on top of the washing machine and making up little songs to go with the rhythm of the washing machine,” Coffey said. It’s just always been something I’ve done, something I’ve loved. Not even consciously, it’s just a part of who I am.”
Now Coffey is in production of her own album in collaboration with Make Believe Studios in Omaha, Neb.
“My parents superstitiously believe that [my involvement in music] was because they were married on the feast of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music,” Coffey said. “All of my siblings sing and play music too.”
Coffey said when she was about five or six, her mother taught her piano, which she learned for nearly 11 years. Having played violin, recorder, ukulele, piano and guitar, Coffey said guitar is her favorite instrument out of the mix.
“I love everything you can do with a guitar,” Coffey said. “I’m also becoming increasingly enamored with the accordion. It’s such a brilliant instrument. It’s such a great sound. It’s so boisterous and fun. It’s so sincere too. There’s something about it that’s just honest; it’s like a giraffe. Giraffes are just quirky and so entirely themselves.”
Ukulele, she said, will always have a special meaning for her because it’s how she got started.
As 17-year-old Coffey walked into a coffee shop with a newly purchased ukulele under her arm, a man named Derek Dibbern stood behind her in line.
“He saw my ukulele and asked if I could play it,” Coffey said, “I told him I had just learned one song, but I played it for him. And one thing led to another and we ended up having this little jam session on the patio of this coffee shop. By the end of our conversation, he asked if I wanted to open for his gig.”
From then on, Coffey and Dibbern met every month, and she opened for his musical act called Frek and the Elixir. Coffey said that Dibbern has a very progressive sound.
“He just has this openness and curiosity about music that I always want to have,” she said. “And he was so encouraging towards me. Everything I came to him with, he was able to critique me, but also really encouraged my song writing.”
Coffey said Dibbern was the role model closest to her, or who personally influenced her the most.
“My role models — Jeff Buckley is definitely one of them. He’s one of the rare beasts of rock and roll. He’s just magical. Regina Spektor kind of gave me sort of a goal for any kind of art that I did. That’s in that she whenever she does something, whenever she opens her mouth and sings something, her audience goes, ‘I know exactly what you’re talking about.’ It’s so weird and she does it in such a unique way, and yet we’re still able to relate with her.”
Coffey’s song-writing combined with her ability to perform the music she writes is uncommon, her producer at Make Believe Studios, Rick Carson, said.
“Catherine’s songs are really original; You can tell she really cares about them,” Carson said. “They’re very storytelling songs. And you don’t get that a lot nowadays. People aren’t buying into substance any more, and if they are, it has to be really good substance. And I think that can happen with her music. There are not too many projects that get me excited like hers.”
The album does not currently have a release date. For now, Carson said, Coffey has given them a structure, and they’re just adding instrumentals. He compared the process of producing an album to testing if noodles are fully cooked.
“You throw the noodles up against the wall and see if they stick,” Carson said. “With the instrumentals, we’re just throwing nine different noodles up against the wall, and seeing what sticks.”
One of Coffey’s housemates, junior Sarah Albers, has lived with Coffey for two years, listening to her play, write, and really get to know the music she plays.
“Coffey and music are inextricable, Albers said. “It’s a way that she expresses herself, its a way she sort of teases out problems. It’s both a method of self-reflection and self-expression. So even when she’s covering another song, the music has significance to her or the lyrics have significance to her. She’s interpreting or processing.”
Albers described her song-learning process as getting to know the music as most people would a person.
“She just has incredible talent,” Albers said. “But what distinguishes any artist, but distinctly her, is her depth of feeling. She has powerful insight, incredible intelligence, and that is paired with the capacity to love and to feel that I haven’t encountered in many other people. I think that is what sets her apart as a musician and artist.”
“Music, what I love about music is that it’s, music is a reaction,” Coffey said. “I think that’s what I love about it. It’s something that’s so entirely our own. I mean, if you’ve done music long enough, it becomes your automatic reaction. If you’re happy about something, or music starts playing in your head, or your sad about something and you hear a million songs that go with it. Music is a way to articulate ourselves in a very vulnerable way.”