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Arts & Entertainment

Cathy Richardson, Whose Range Embraces Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, has Ties All Over the Area

The Elmhurst resident credits a standing ovation at a Hinsdale church and the mentorship of neighbor rocker Jim Peterik with launching her singing career. She brings her show to Downers Grove Feb. 26.

Elmhurst resident Cathy Richardson was shocked when she got her first standing ovation—the first of what probably would be hundreds during a 20-year singing career. She was 7 years old, and had just performed in a variety show at Hinsdale United Methodist Church.

“I was so scared; I didn’t know why people were standing up,” she said about the reaction to her rendition of Barbra Streisand’s song, “Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long.” Her mother, Carol, reassured her, saying, “It was a good thing and it meant they REALLY liked it!”

Richardson came from a musical family. Her mother, who died in 2005, sang, played piano and encouraged Cathy, her two older sisters and a younger brother to sing. “But when I sang, people took notice,” she said.

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That notice has included raves for her singing the songs of Janis Joplin and Grace Slick with Big Brother and the Holding Company and Jefferson Starship, respectively; and performances and albums with her own Cathy Richardson Band. She's been the lead vocalist for Jefferson Starship since 2008.

In the 90s, she performed about 150 shows a year. Now, her yearly shows number about 10, including a few local venues. She will be performing at 8 p.m. Feb. 26 at Ballydoyle Irish Pub in downtown Downers Grove, and 8 p.m. March 24 during the Jefferson Starship 40th Anniversary Tour with Paul Kantner at Mayne Stage in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago.

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Richardson said she has been interested in music and singing, “as long as I can remember,” adding she has known she wanted a music career since she was a kid.

Born at Hinsdale Hospital 42 years ago this month, she lived in Burr Ridge through adulthood and attended Elm School, Hinsdale Junior High School and Hinsdale Central High School. Richardson has owned a house since 1997 in Elmhurst, where she now lives after a stint living and performing in San Francisco.

Richardson also has ties to the La Grange area. Her parents, Carol and Keith, graduated from the Lyons Township High School class of 1957; her grandparents lived for about 60 years in the 1600 block of 55th Street; her grandmother was a volunteer for about 40 years at what now is Adventist La Grange Memorial Hospital and her portrait hangs in the halls; and her father owned what now is a BP Amoco gas station at Plainfield and LaGrange roads. She also remembers walking to the Highland Queen drive-in for milkshakes while staying with her grandparents for two weeks when her parents went to Hawaii. 

It was at the Beautiful Day record store on LaGrange Road in downtown La Grange that she first saw singer Jim Peterik, a founder of the Ides of March and Survivor, who became her mentor.

Richardson was a high school freshman when she and some friends took the train from Hinsdale to La Grange. They were looking at buttons in a shop when they noticed a man with “big hair” at the counter wearing a fur coat, glasses and a Survivor button. “I said 'That’s the guy from Survivor.’ ”

She crossed paths with Peterik again, in a way. Richardson was a cashier, worked on cars and sold and repaired tires at her father's gas station, but she was not working one day in 1990 when Peterik came into the station to fill up. Richardson’s father approached him about his daughter.

“My father said, ‘My daughter sings; do you have any advice?’ ” The singer responded, “Yeah, get a good lawyer.”

Peterik gave her father a business card for a music attorney.

His advice was invaluable when Richardson was offered a contract by someone to manage her. She sought out that attorney for advice. That attorney said the contract was not very good, listened to her demo, thought she sang well, and put her in contact with Peterik as her producer.   

She played her demo for Peterik, who lives about five minutes away from her in Burr Ridge, and worked with him for a few years.

Richardson said Peterik definitely was her mentor and, “one of my earliest supporters.”

In an e-mail, Peterik said that when he first met Richardson, “I saw an amazing, raw and natural talent; nothing that even her inexperience could mask.”

Richardson has performed at Peterik’s World Stage shows, including Jan. 15, when she sang Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” 

Richardson sang solo, then with her Cathy Richardson Band and now with the Macrodots. She has released seven albums, plus appeared on other record collections. Her first album, “Moon, not Banana,” came out in 1993 and is her best-selling at about 10,000 copies, she said.

 In 1999 at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago, she started her association with “Love, Janis,” a play in which one actress would read letters from the late Janis Joplin and Richardson would sing her songs, such as “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Piece of My Heart.” She performed in the show at the Sag Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, N.Y., co-owned by singer/actress Julie Andrews’ daughter. Andrews was at the opening and loved the show, she said.

“I felt very blessed in New York; it got good reviews,” Richardson said.

The Sag Harbor run was one month in the summer of 2000 and led to an Off Broadway run at the Village Theatre in New York City from 2001-2003.

Richardson performed for 15 months of the two-year run and told the producers, “If it is playing anywhere cool, let me know.” She ended up singing in that show for about four or five months in San Francisco, where she lived for a while.

The best reviews came in San Francisco, and Richardson remembers Joplin’s friends came to the show.

“They were in tears. They loved it and they just embraced me."

She brought in members of the Cathy Richardson Band to play in San Francisco with the drummer from “Love, Janis,” but, “That became expensive.”

“Love, Janis” played during 2007 in Tucson and Phoenix and she joined the Arizona productions.

Joplin was unique, Richardson said. “Nobody could be like her. I never considered myself anything like her.”

Richardson said she had told the “Love, Janis” producers in Chicago that she does not do theater, but said they responded they did not want an imitator, but instead someone who captures Joplin’s sound.

“It took me a while to get really good at it. Janis is so unique; who really could be her?”

Richardson crisscrossed the United States in 2007 with Joplin’s original band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, on the Summer of Love 40th anniversary tour. The group played right before Jefferson Starship and she sang Joplin’s songs, “Piece of My Heart,” “Ball and Chain” and “Down on Me.”

Big Brother, which has continued with other female singers, went on each night before Jefferson Starship, whom Richardson met and later sang with.

Richardson sang on Jefferson Starship’s “Jefferson’s Tree of Liberty” folk-oriented album in 2008 that went back to Jefferson Airplane’s roots before members used electric guitars. Original “Airplane” member Paul Kantner wanted to keep on playing, and in 1995 reached an agreement that allows his Jefferson Starship to co-exist with Mickey Thomas’ Starship. Kantner’s group plays music up to about 1979, Richardson said.

In 2009, Richardson was the female vocalist during Jefferson Starship’s Heroes of Woodstock tour and sang “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit.” At the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival in Bethel, N.Y., the group played the songs that Jefferson Airplane actually performed 40 years earlier. Also playing at the reunion concert were Levon Helm of The Band, Richie Havens and Mountain. “It was very fun for me to do this.”

About singing the songs of rock icons Janis Joplin and Grace Slick with their original bands, she said, “It’s amazing. I can’t even fathom it sometimes.”

For financial reasons, she moved back to her Elmhurst home.  “A lot of good things happened (in San Francisco); it was time for me to move back.” 

She and her art director, Bill Dolan, were nominated in 2004 for a Grammy for best recording package for her album, “The Road to Bliss.”

Her voice can be heard in national television commercials for fast food, beer, air freshener and insurance.

She is collaborating with Zack Smith, a songwriter, guitarist and producer, on the Macrodots, which she describes as “harder rock, power pop, crunch rock.” The group’s Web site is themacrodots.com.

Richardson says the songs she sings and mostly writes are just rock music. “I’m a rock-and-roller who’s a songwriter.” Her own Web site is crband.com.

On her myspace.com/cathyrichardson account, she is asked, “Cathy Richardson, why are you so frigging awesome?”

When this Patch reporter asked the same question, she laughed and answered, “I don’t know. I guess I was just born that way.”

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