Coming soon to Bandcamp on the Teen Freaks label is Aunty Cathy & Me: Songs by Cathy Cilliers and Roz Fisher. Many music fans in Cambodia will know Roz, and some of the many and varied singers and instrumentalists who make up the Coz Collective who have recorded this set of songs – more about them later – but who is Cathy Cilliers? LengPleng had a chat with Roz to find out.
As the title suggests, Cathy Cilliers is Roz’s aunt, the younger sister of her mother, an amateur songwriter from Durban, South Africa. “She was a qualified concert pianist, ran a music studio, and taught music and ran choirs,” says Roz, “But most of all she loved Elvis, and she loved country music, and she loved to write songs.”
Roz’s most precious memories of Aunty Cathy revolve around music. “She was my very first music teacher. I would sit at the piano and stretch my little three year old fingers, and once I could reach an octave she started giving me piano lessons. Until my teens she lived with us, then she met her husband and they moved up the road, and that is where I really remember her writing songs, taking it seriously. I would be sitting on the floor, at her feet, colouring-in or something, and she would ask my opinion – how does this sound? Or often: is this a new song or have I written somebody else’s song? She was writing based on what she knew, and the country music of the time. They were written in the seventies, early eighties, so they have a vintage feel, you will feel like you know the song already.”
Cathy’s classical background played an important part in capturing the tunes for posterity. “Her process was amazing – I realise now that not everyone writes a song and then gets out the music manuscript paper and actually notates the tune. She could read music as well as English, if not better. She would work out the song with her 12-string handmade Spanish guitar and her little brown-and-cream tape deck, and when she had a version that she was happy with she would record it, and while it was playing back she would write out the notes.”
Roz speaks enthusiastically of her lifelong urge to bring these songs to the world. “One day I started saying to her: Cathy, what if something happens and we never hear these songs again? If anything happens to you, please can I take care of your music so that people can hear it? She said of course. Then after my teens we all ended up living in different places, and I didn’t often get to see her, but every time I saw her I reminded her: don’t forget, I’m going to do something with your songs.”
Aunty Cathy, at 77 years old, was a casualty of the pandemic in 2021. “She had a stroke and was recovering well but then died of COVID. It was the weirdest way of grieving. I knew she would have said: stop crying about it, do something about the songs! It took my cousin Charles, her son, a year before he could bring himself to open her music cupboard. Then one day I got a file with all the scans and I balled my eyes out.
“I now have about 60 manuscripts of largely unpublished and unrecorded songs. Only two of them that I know of have been recorded. One was an Afrikaans song, Boetie Stoot, about going to a country fair and running out of petrol, which was recorded by South African artist Sonja Herholdt in 1988. The other one is There’s Someone Who Loves You, that Dave Zdriluk is singing on the album. It was entered into a songwriting competition in the 80s, and she won the state final, which got it on the radio, but it was sung by two men and didn’t really go over well in the South Africa of the day.”
Once Roz had the sheet music, it was a matter of assembling a local team. “If I was not living in this city I don’t think it would ever have happened, because I couldn’t just approach any musician and say hey, let’s make a country album. It had to be musicians capable of playing country music. I approached to Joe Wrigley first, and he said talk to Greg Beshers, who liked the songs. He took on production, and had the connections in the US to overdub mandolin and pedal steel.” The core band is essentially Joe, Sal and Greg of the Jumping Jacks, with assistance from Mol Vibol on keyboards, with Andrea Rubbio of Geography of the Moon handling the mixing.
Rather than concentrate on one vocal, the Coz Collective includes a number of singers who are active locally – Marianna Hensley (Scotch & Soda, MuXu, Grass Snake Revival, Mimi & the Merrymakers), Cat Isaac (The Broken Cymbal) and David Zdriluk (Cambodia Country Band, The Extraordinary Chambers), with Roz singing You Don’t Get To Love Me, one of the two songs of her own that fill out this first release.
“In the process of watching Cathy write songs, I learned to write myself. I wrote my first song when my dad died when I was 12. I presented this song to my mother, and made her promise not to cry, and then I started singing – and now you’re gone, we’ll carry on – you said you wouldn’t cry! I sang it at church, I sang it at any event I went to. Cathy was so proud which really encouraged me. My teenage years turned into a rock opera – any time something happened I wrote a song about it. Just like Cathy was writing songs about things that were happening to her, or to people around her, and it made me think about words totally differently. Now words are my career – I write CVs for a living. I actually don’t think I realised how much she shaped me.”
The album is unapologetically country in style. “Like Cathy, my inspiration is straight out of country music. These Nights is not a country song, but it fits in the context. Cat performs the song like I always wanted to hear it sound, and this is her very first recording! You Don’t Get To Love Me is particularly dear to my heart because that was written in Phnom Penh – if I wasn’t living here I wouldn’t have had the courage to do that. I know that if I didn’t have Cathy’s songs to work with I’d never have been motivated enough to do this with my own – I never had that same faith or belief in my own songs.”
And the launch plans? “We are looking at November to launch because the good folks at Geography of the Moon, who run the Teen Freaks label, will be in town. We’re planning to do something small at Little Susie – full country theme with hay bales in the street and a couple of horses. And then I want to get a mechanical bull – if anyone knows where I can find one do get in touch.”
The album is now available for pre-order now on Bandcamp; the first single, Forget, will be released on September 27, but it will be debuting on RadioOun’s Drivetime show on Thursday 31 August after 4 pm, and thereafter added to the playlist. The rest of the songs will be released one by one, with the last landing in December, just in time for the Radio Oun Top 100 Songs of All Time 2023.
“It’s the most incredible thing for me to present her songs in particular to the world,” says Roz. “I’m righting the wrong of her songs never being heard.”
Track listing:
Forget, by Cathy, vocal by Marianna Hensley
I’ll be gone, by Cathy, vocal by Marianna Hensley
There’s someone who loves you, by Cathy, vocal by David Zdriluk
These nights, by Roz, vocal by Cat Isaac
You don’t get to love me, by Roz, vocal by Roz Fisher