Caitlin Cary

How would you describe a year in which your first solo album receives bouquets of critical accolades, your first solo world tour includes opening for your idol Lyle Lovett and, for the first time in too long of a time, you get to be “gleefully unemployed” from day jobs? For Caitlin Cary, 2002 was one such year. It was the year that this founding (and constant) member of Whiskeytown fully launched her journey into solo-hood with While You Weren’t Looking, a disc that caused USAToday’s Brian Mansfield to proclaim that “Ryan Adams isn’t the only talented alumnus of alternative-country’s deities Whiskeytown.”

So what does Cary do for an encore? How about creating a stellar sophomore effort that builds upon the debut’s many charms? I’m Staying Out stands out as a superb example of uniquely Southern pop. Rock, country, soul and folk smoothly blend together with Cary’s gorgeous vocals serving as the unifying force. And what a force her voice is: majestic and melancholic, honey and hickory, Caitlin’s singing is like a comforting shoulder to the brokenhearted, easing them through love’s tough times.

Given her accomplishments, it’s somewhat surprising that a musical career wasn’t something Cary dreamt about growing up in the small northern Ohio town of Seville. She imagined that she might become a writer or perhaps a veterinarian. Music, however, played a major role in the Cary household. Her parents share a love of singing and her dad even built instruments. All of her six older brothers are musically inclined, with her brother Peter being one of her early musical inspirations. As a young child, Cary actually wrote songs that she “performed” on her dad’s homemade harpsichord. When she was around six, she started studying the violin, which she played for a decade.

Her creative spirit was also fostered early on at the “weird hippie school” that her parents sent her to. When Cary eventually entered the local public schools, however, she had a hard time fitting in. “I had no idea how to be among normal people,” she confesses. For her sophomore year of high school, she attempted to become one of the popular students. She put away her violin and tried out for cheerleading -- she didn’t make the squad. “My legs probably weren’t tanned enough,” she hypothesizes now. Going to the College of Wooster in Ohio allowed her to “figure out that I was, in fact, a freak and revel in it.”

During college, Cary picked up the violin again while playing in her first band (a jokey country covers outfit called the Garden Weasels). After graduation, she dabbled in music while living in Houston and Richmond. She followed her writing muse, entering North Carolina State’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing. It was while in Raleigh that Cary’s life-plan was inexorably altered. A young rock musician named Ryan Adams was starting a band and looking for a violin player. A mutual acquaintance mentioned Cary. “I got a call just out of the blue and it was Ryan saying ‘I’m doing this band. We love Uncle Tupelo and we’re practicing tomorrow, can you come over?’” Cary, who had only a passing familiarity with Uncle Tupelo, decided to check it out. “It was just a really strange confluence of events that made Whiskeytown a ‘thing’ rather than a local band that played on weekends. We just hit on something at the right time.” For the next several years, Cary served as the serene presence next to Adams’ rambunctious antics. “I really didn’t know what I was getting into and at every phase I kept feeling a sense of unreality and thinking ‘What the hell am I doing here?’”

That sense of unreality has dissipated as Cary has ventured out on her own and found her music striking a responsive chord with music fans, critics and fellow performers. Cary finds it very “flattering that so many people really seemed to like the (first) record.” One person who really enjoyed the album was country music star Mary Chapin Carpenter; Cary got a note on her fanmail web site from Carpenter stating that she liked While You Weren’t Looking so much that she bought 20 copies to give to her friends. Cary and Carpenter subsequently struck up a friendship, and when Cary performed in Charlottesville, Virginia, the two sang together on “Pony,” Carpenter’s favorite tune off the disc.