Episode 02: Catherine Haridy
Catherine Haridy is the CEO of the Australian Music Centre, former Executive Director of the Australian Association of Artists Managers, an Artist Manager, a Business owner, a Board Director and a mother of two. Cath cut her teeth at both Warner Music and Festival Mushroom Records in A&R before crossing the floor to Artists Management. Establishing her own business Catherine Haridy management in 2006, Cath and her team manage Artists and Producers, Mixers, Writers, and Engineers.
Her stable includes a roster of talented and enduring Artists including Eskimo Joe, Jebediah, Adalita, Bob Evans and ABC TV family artist dirtgirl along with some of the brightest in Music Production and Writing: Anna Laverty, Tony Buchen Steven Schram, Joel Quartermain, JP Fung, Jimi Maroudas as well as Mick Glossop (ANZ only) and Ian Caple (ANZ only).
CREDITS:
Produced and presented by Chelsea Wilson
Editing by Amy Chapman and Chelsea Wilson
Transcript by Laura Ingram
TRANSCRIPT:
Chelsea: Hi and welcome to control with Chelsea Wilson, the podcast where we speak to incredibly inspiring women in the music industry who have taken control of their music and control of their careers. In this episode, we speak to a woman who has truly become a leader in her field, boldly yet quietly defying expectations and forging her own path in the industry.
Executive director, board director and artist manager, I was delighted to speak to Catherine Haridy. Cutting her teeth in A&R, Cath began her career working for major labels, Mushroom Group and Warner. Stepping out, she established Catherine Haridy Management in 2006, building a roster of artists and producers, including Adalita, Jebediah and Eskimo Joe. With her exceptional strategic thinking ability and rapid-fire problem-solving mind, it's no surprise that she is a sought after voice in the music industry, providing governance to organizations, such as Support Act and the Community Broadcasting Foundation. She's an ambassador of APRA AMCOS, and in 2019 took the helm as Executive Director of the Association of Artists Managers. I have the pleasure of working with Cath on the board of Music Victoria, and I admire her generosity, intellect and analytical thinking. We spoke on the podcast about her time in A&R, and if the art in Artists and Repertoire still exists.
I asked her how artists can survive during COVID: Is it a good time to release music? And how artists can navigate tricky interpersonal relationships. We also spoke about imposter syndrome, her take on confidence and what the next steps are for Australian music. This is my chat with Cath Haridy in Control.
Chelsea: Hi Cath. Thank you so much for joining me.
Cath: Thanks Chelsea for having me.
Chelsea: So excited to talk to you. I was hoping we'd meet face to face to have this conversation, but given we are now in our seventh week of Melbourne isolation lockdown, we’re online today, but I can still see you which is lovely. How are you going?
Cath: I'm holding up, I'm holding up okay thank you for asking. I think it just depends on the day and it depends on the circumstances that play out during the day. So some days are really great, some days I walk away feeling really satisfied and very fulfilled by everything that I've achieved and all of the great stuff I've been able to do with the family. And then other days I feel like I've just been chasing my tail.
Chelsea: I love it how you said walking away, like you're walking from one side of your house to the other – it’s a sense of achievement! [laughter]
Cath: And that is what we're doing, let's face it!
Chelsea: Yeah, it is a really difficult and strange time. And you know, it's going to be interesting to see, where we land, kind of, at the end of this. But I'd love to kind of go back a little bit in your history and just talk about your time in A&R. This has just been such a male dominated space for decades. I read that you said you broke in after being interviewed for an assistant role. What do you think you said in this interview that got you over the line?
Cath: Well, I was kind of lucky enough at that time to be recommended for this particular role. It was an assistant A&R role at Warner Music and it was working with the very famous A&R guide Michael Parisi. He was working out of the Melbourne office, was looking for an assistant and I was desperately looking for a break to get into music. I couldn't have thought of anything else that I really felt passionately about and that I wanted to do with my life. I felt that my connection to music and that emotional connection that I have with music was really propelling me to want to actually create a career for myself in some way.
I had a really long interview with him in the Melbourne office of Warner Music when they were based out of West Melbourne. I remember feeling like, you know, it was a really positive and wonderful interview. And then some months later, I got the role, I started the role and, it was in the very late nineties - so 1998 - and we were still working with really big hardware - computer hardware - and I remember they didn't quite have a desk for me at that point and they didn't have quite have a computer for me either. So I used to take my notepad into Michael's office and he would, um, you know, recite all the things that he wanted to do and I would take lots and lots of notes. Then I would trundle off back to whatver space they'd managed to shove me into in that building. And I would go off and just make it all up as I went along. It was the most exciting time. I was very, very lucky. And from there I got my break with him, um, to become an A&R manager when we moved to the newly formed festival Mushroom Records.
That was a really important time for me, it influenced an informed very many elements of the way that I do my work with my artists now. We worked with a great team. It was a small team in an independent label. And a small team at the time, we're talking about 60 people in a company, and now that would probably be considered maybe medium size now in our current state of affairs.
We really cared about our artists. We worked very closely together from department to department. We really thought about strategy and planning for an artist. We worked very closely with our artist managers and we had a lot of heart, which is something that sometimes I feel can be a little bit missing in our current state.
Chelsea: I mean do you feel like the art of A&R has got a little bit lost over time? The landscape's changed so much. Particularly back in the seventies, eighties, I guess nineties as well, where labels would sign an artist with this idea that they would develop them over a course of records. You know no one expected David Bowie's first album to sell!
It was a long long-term plan and now they're signing artists only if they have a certain amount of online Facebook followers. What's the current role of A&R look like?
Cath: Well, I think it's evolved over time. I think when you're talking about the traditional A&R person, that person was probably a producer back in the day. Someone who would work in studio and work with an artist over many, many months to develop a sound.
It’s evolved over the years, it's, it's become much more of a role that involves delegation and facilitation. So there is that creative element too. Our people will still work with an artist in that creating music space and helping them to develop and curate. But I think it's much more than that now, and has been much more than that for some time. You’re almost working as the internal artist manager within a record label - if you work in a record label -dealing with different teams of people and you're helping to really facilitate the process of an artist release from the creation of a recording through to the release of that recording.
Chelsea: So back in that late nineties period when you first started an A&R, it was still that kind of golden era of CD sales.
Cath: Yeah, we could really see it. I remember in the first couple of months of starting in my job with Michael at Warner, I remember standing down in the underground car park, with a bunch of people and we were having this very conversation. And now recounting that conversation, it seems so archaic and ridiculous. We were talking about Napster and illegal online downloads and things that at that point were considered fringe. Now look at where we are 20 years later: It's everything, that digital spaces is everything for us. Whereas there was a real resistance at that time, to see that there was going to be a transition and then there was going to be an evolution, or a revolution in the way that we listened to and appreciate music.
I remember foreseeing it then I remember thinking it. We were celebrating the big Alanis Morissette release, post Jagged Little Pill - the one after that. It was a relatively big success. And I remember the record label making a really big deal out of it. We had this huge party, went on a bus to a venue and drinks and the whole bit, and everybody was super excited and I had just started, it was like the dream you know: parties, music! It was just all fantastic. It was very easy to feel in the back of my mind, like we were experiencing something that was coming to an end. That this was not the peak, but it was the downward slide.
Chelsea: And do you think the music industry - in particular the recording industry - has learned to look forward? To try and encounter these trends? Or do you think we're in exactly the same position as before, and vulnerable to any change at any moment?
Cath: It's all a bit dependent on who it is that you're working with. I guess in any industry you've got certain elements of the industry that trailblaze and then certain elements of the industry that run behind. I think that we probably have the full gamut of that in the recorded space and in the record label space, but I've got a really soft spot for that time and those labels. Being a part of those labels was really special for me. And it really helped me to understand the mechanics of everything. From recording - real analog recording when people were using tape like half inch tape and two-inch tape - right through to that transitionary period into pro tools. That was a really huge time and I learned a lot being, just sitting in studios with bands and artists, this watching them record talking to each other, listening to producers. The whole process to me was so magical, absolutely magical. Being at the coalface of the creation of that recording, is still one of two key reasons that makes me really excited inside about music.
Chelsea: So as an A&R director, what does it take (or what did it take) for you to go “that's the band” or “that's an artist” that I want to sign? It just feels so risky in terms of making that recommendation to a company that they should invest and spend in this artist, because you believe that ultimately they're going to resonate with people. But it's still a business choice. You're saying “this band is going to sell records”. I know they call Clive Davis and people like that “the golden ear”. How do you hear something within a band that tells you “that's the band”?
Cath: I think over time it became a very unconscious number of things that would just sort of click in the back of your mind. Certain things would click in and you would go “that's it”. A lot of it too was - is still is - based on gut instinct. It’s feel, it's that indescribable thing when you see a musician perform and they just transcend. There's something about the whole presentation from the song and the performance, to the way that musician looks and the way that they appeal to you and the way they speak to you, that you click into and gives you that feeling. That feeling then becomes a series of conversations. It's almost like courting developing a relationship, do I want to work with this person? Are we a good match? Are my values the same as your values? Can we trust each other? It's all these things.
You think it's just as simple as seeing a musician and going “will they sell units”? I hate that word [because] it’s more than that. It's a series of other things: right down to trust and sharing values, which is really at the heart of a lot of it. Good songwriting obviously is very important.
Chelsea: Yeah. The song writing is so crucial, so important.
Cath: Yeh it's at the heart of it. We don't have that talent where you aren't a great songwriter, then the rest of it can be there, but you really have to reverse engineer it.
Chelsea: Forming and maintaining excellent relationships with artists has just been such a huge part of your career. You moved into management, which felt like a natural fit for you. Being an artist manager is just one of the most demanding roles in the music industry. And I think a completely unique role compared to any other industry. In the world, that manager and artist relationship is closer than almost any other relationship, I think besides maybe marriage, but it almost is like a marriage. It's a musical marriage and when those relationships fall apart between artists and managers, it can just really destroy people's lives. I mean you see in the media cases, like Guy Sebastian's big fallout with his management and there's so many stories of that relationship breakdown. How do you manage the relationship with your artists so that you still have some sort of degree of emotional separation? So you don't completely lose yourself within somebody else's career, even though their career is what you're paid to prioritise?
Cath: I've learned over the years that you should commence a relationship the way that you intend to see it through. I think that's really the key to all this: knowing from the very beginning what you're willing to give, what they're willing to give, whether you share similar values, whether you think you can develop a level of trust, whether you think there can be a level of authenticity and honesty in the relationship. Because there'll be times where - for various reasons - there might not be able to be that level of authenticity and honesty. I think when you've had a relationship (as artist manager) for such a long time, as I have with some of my artists (who I’ve been managing or working with in various ways for 20 years or more) the relationship changes over time as well. It goes through all sorts of peaks and troughs.
It's very much like any other really close relationship, and I liken it to a marriage. I think it's a very good way of describing it. You go through all the same problems and issues and challenges that you would in a marriage, except you're also sharing this really tight business relationship as well. And your priorities within that relationship are very strongly centred around the business side of things and strategy and being creative within those parameters.
So yeah, I think it is very, very difficult, to be and maintain a functional relationship consistently in that kind of close situation for years and years and years. I think it's inevitable that you'll go through ups and downs and that sometimes you feel you can be more honest than others. I think that's natural and it's part of being human.
Chelsea: I feel expectation management must be such a huge part of the role. How do you manage the sort of emotional ups and downs with artists?
Cath: Oh, it's massive. Managing those expectations can be a massive, massive part of my everyday life. Trying to be clear in my communications in that and trying to live by those objectives and trying to actually make those crystal clear from my end, so that there's no misunderstandings of what we're trying to achieve together.
I think it’s a two-way street as well. I spend a lot of time and have spent a lot of time (particularly with artists when you first start working with them) really trying to get to the root of what it is that they want. And that's not just one or two conversations. That can take six to twelve months to understand the personalities that you're working with. That isn’t quick thing. It's a really a progressive thing and it takes commitment from the artist manager and a lot of commitment from the artist as well. You're in a two-way relationship.
So it's got to be both of you together, learning to trust and understand, and also get to the root of what those needs and expectations are. Then from a manager perspective being honest with yourself and asking “can I deliver this? Is it possible? Is it realistic for me?”
Chelsea: And do you ever experience that imposter syndrome? It's such a massive thing to undertake the responsibility of somebody's career and ultimately the pressure placed on you with someone's hopes and dreams. I mean, no wonder the expectation management is so important!
Cath: Oh, absolutely 100%I've experienced imposter syndrome and I still do. I think every week of my life there's a circumstance that I'll stumble across and the expectation may be that because I have been in this role for a fairly long amount of time, that I'll have an answer to how to approach every single situation that comes my way. But the reality is you're often faced with situations which still, even now, I've never experienced before. Dilemmas that involve some time to work through and meditate on and potentially ask other people for their opinions as well. Really awkward situations and sometimes really dangerous situations that can actually end up being life or death situations. So people often think that because wearing contemporary music, it must be all really fun and light and joyful, but there's actually some really serious issues that, particularly as music managers, I know many people will identify with, that are really heavy that you have to work through with your artist. I can honestly say I've probably experienced nearly every single one of them at some point or another in my working life. So it’s definitely not a role for the faint hearted!
Chelsea: Mental health is such a huge priority for the music industry and it should have been for a long time, but only now we're really starting to have conversations about artists and also industry workers, but particularly artists dealing with alcoholism and mental health. It's almost like as an artist manager, it wouldn't hurt to also have a degree in psychology!
Cath: Oh, absolutely! I think having a degree in psychology would be extraordinarily helpful. In any role that you play within the music industry, even as an artist. I think if you're an artist working in a band with several others, there's a whole series of dynamics and relationship shifts and control and power shifts that happen within those ecosystems. Those really close relationships are always going to breed ups and downs. For me as an artist manager, from a mental health perspective, the best thing I've ever done is actually having the ability to go through the AAMS ‘Gimme Shelter Mental Health Intervention Program’, which has given me mental health first aid training. That first mental health first aid training is actually incredible. I found it really, really helpful and I've actually been able to reflect on situations that I've been faced with as an artist manager, with my artists in that space and think about how I would have approached them differently if I'd had that basic framework.
Chelsea: It's interesting you touched on how artists are often managers of their own band. So you might be their artist's manager, but then underneath the artist (or your direct contact, which is often the singer in the band) is kind of a subsidiary leader of the people they pull in. How do you support your artists to be able to be great leaders of their own team?
Cath: It's a really challenging on this one is a really difficult one because I think it depends upon the artist or the band that you're dealing with, and the relationships that they have in play with each other. Sometimes I would advocate for completely stepping away from having any deep sort of tinkering within the structure of the relationships of a band. But then there've been other circumstances where I felt like I've had to intervene in a really deep way within a band, but only when they allow you to be that person within their structure, because sometimes they just don't want that from a manager. That's not what they're requiring will they wanting. And sometimes they want a lot of support and a lot of personal coping strategies.
It’s very dependent [on the circumstance]. I've dealt with both extremes. When you don't have that close relationship with a band, where you're not really intimately involved in understanding their relationships with each other nor having the ability to intervene, you feel a little bit removed from it. You can feel not [as] invested as you'd like to be.
Chelsea: It must be difficult because ultimately if there's internal politics within a band structure that you're not privy to, but it's affecting the band output and performance, well then that is affecting you as a manager. How do you think musicians can improve in terms of that interpersonal management? These are the things that aren't part of music degrees.
You know, we don't go to industry conferences and talk about “how can we have good conversations between ourselves around songwriting splits? How do we talk about what realistic outcomes are?” Bands a band split up over things such as, the front person who wrote the song is 100% of songwriting royalties. They're buying a house. Some of the other bandmates are still working part-time and JB-HI. That there's touring artists versus recording artists. The touring artists are upset that they're not the ones booked to play on the album.
How can we improve as musicians to be able to manage our fellow musicians in our projects?
Cath: I just have to mention I've just recently saw the Go-Go's documentary.
It painted a fascinating picture of group of people in a band and their evolution from a relationship perspective, when it comes to things like songwriting and performance and splits and payments and who got what and how and relationship with their manager and how that ended, and then their movements to a bigger manager and how that was disappointing. It was really, really interesting because it was really close to home for me because I do feel like my job as an artist manager is actually to empower my artists to be better and to have a deeper understanding of all parts of their creative and business lives.
It's my job to give them as much information to make as best an educated decision about every element of their career that I can. It's not my job to infantilise my artist and actually try and over override and overpower my artist and make the decisions on their behalf and treat them like children. Because that isn't the relationship that they should be having and I'm there to educate, I'm there to facilitate, I'm there to help strategize and help them realize their vision.
Chelsea: I wanted to talk to you about social media, which has become a major part of the daily lives of artists. That would not have been the case when you started in A&R in the 1990’s. Artists used to have fan clubs and then maybe they got a website for the first time we had the CD-ROM extra content on the disk!
Cath: We had Myspace Chels!
Chelsea: [Laughter] And then we had Myspace! But now artists are expected to have these daily Instagram stories with great imagery and inspirational quotes, and artists are often referred to now as brands, which is a completely different skillset than what we started off doing as musicians.
How do you advise your artists to use social media? Do you recommend they outsource social media or take it in their stride?
Cath: I’ve seen it implemented in all kinds of ways. But my personal opinion is that an artist has to be invested in their social media for it to be a real authentic success. Every artist has a unique voice. It is almost impossible for me to replicate that voice. Although the longer I know the artist, the more ability I have to help and assist them in that way.
But I do feel that it's about isolating. There's so many different channels, so many different media you can tap into. The question is: which do you identify with and what are you going to commit to?
No one should be expected to do all of them extremely well, because they are different and they're unique and they appeal to different demographics, in age, in geography, in all sorts of different respects.
So for me with an artists [I ask]: “What do you enjoy? Do you like Twitter? You don't like Twitter. Okay well that's fine. We still have to run one, but it'll be an official HQ Twitter.” So we'll do official HQ posts. They won't be heartfelt in the way that say one from an artist within their own voice would maybe put it, but that's fine, we still have it. Whereas maybe Instagram is a better fit because they're more visual in their expression.
So I think that if that's the case, that's the one you should focus on, and you should put emphasis on that. You try and build it and build it really really well, because I think now more than ever, you have to be genuine and authentic in everything you do. You can't fake it till you make it, because I don't think that works anymore.
Chelsea: Especially now with the kind of call-out culture that we have, anything that potentially doesn't feel authentic to you as a brand can be so detrimental to your overall brand and image. It's been really a difficult time with the COVID pandemic in terms of artists being able to perform live, and there's been this huge expectation on artists to do stream shows. What's your experience been around the strange show in environment?
Cath: We have to put a value on our creative output. I feel really strongly about that. That's something that someone would have to present me with a really compelling argument (I mean super compelling) for me to think that out that creative output should not have a value added to it. An artist needs to feel re-numerated for what they do. It's a part of being validated for what you're producing for your output. And for me being paid for something as a part of that. It's not a dirty thing, it's a part of the overall process. Giving away free content has its place in certain circumstances, but I do feel that there's been a level of de-valuing of that creative output over this time, due to the fact that people are desperate to make a connection with their community, and I get that. I understand where that comes from, but in the back of my mind, I know, and we all know that at some point or another, we're going to come out of this into some kind of recovery process. And we're going to have some level of a new normal that we haven't quite worked out yet. And within that new normal, there has to be a fairness and a value still placed on that creative content otherwise, how do you make somebody feel positive in that way about that output? For me it's just so important. So yes, I understand why people would stream. I don't think there should be a pressure to do it. I think it has to be under the right circumstances for the right reasons.
Identity building: great! You want to achieve some kind of outcome or objective from it: great! But just doing it for the sake of doing it: no point to me.
Part of the struggle for many of us and part of what makes our music sector is so exciting and so alive is this idea that “there's no clear path to success”. That success can be reached by taking all sorts of different paths. There's no right path. There's no correct process or procedure or protocol that you take to get there. It can happen just through the confluence of good timing and good luck. It can just be two things: the right moment, the right piece of music in the right circumstance. And then suddenly it can be a massive worldwide success story, but those are more the exception rather than the rule. I think that if it happens: that's great. But I think it's taking the journey to try and get there that's the most exciting part. It's not the actual getting there that's the exciting part.
If you've seen people experience large scale success, to know that [success] comes with a whole other set of challenges: problems, relationship issues, money issues etc. There's all sorts of different challenges that pop up and it doesn't mean that that's the end of the road. There’s a whole other set of circumstances that need to be explored at that point.
Chelsea: How can we reframe our ideas around what success looks like?
Cath: Yeah, I've always believed Chelsea that success is what you want it to be. It's a personal thing. It shouldn't be something that is set within our community by others, it should be yours and yours alone. And I have always believed if you're an artist that strives to just release an album of your own work, that is success in itself. And you may happen to put it up on a number of streaming services and suddenly your friends and your family can access it. And if you get a number of people you don't know loving it: that's even better, but that can be success. Just making the music can be the success.
Chelsea: Just being able to write a song is already a huge success!
Cath: You know, just being able to play a musical instrument to me is a huge success. The art of being really good at one instrument in your life. I think it's such an incredible thing, and what it does for you neurologically as well as is just so wonderful. To me that would be enough, let alone anything else on top of that.
Chelsea: Do you celebrate the wins? You know those good moments? Because I feel like often in the music industry we’re juggling multiple roles. Whether you're an artist as well as a manager, or yourself being a board director, as well as an executive director, as well as an artist's manager, which is go, go, go with the to-do lists all the time. You finish one project and you're onto the next. Do you pause? And do you go “that was awesome. It's a success”? And how do you celebrate those wins?
Cath: Those wins you celebrate them for a moment and then you're moving on to the next thing. “Okay. So that happened. We got there. Great clap, clap, clap, have a glass of champagne. What's next? Um, what, what, where, where do we go to from here? Where's the next point that we want to get to in order to feel like we're moving forward?” So yes, I have done and I have done with my artists celebrated those successes, but they're momentary.
And when they happen, gosh I love them, because it just gives you a moment of reprieve. It's like, “Oh okay. We got there. Take a deep breath. Enjoy savor the moment for a second. Okay, what's next?”
Chelsea: I really wanted to talk to you about confidence. Confidence is often blamed for women's participation (or lack of participation) in music industry roles, particularly at board level and senior management roles. They say that women aren't as confident and that's holding us back. Do you agree with that? And how did you get your confidence?
Cath: Hmm, it's an interesting one Chelsea, I haven't really thought about it before. I think there might be a predisposition for people to believe that you have to be a certain way to “climb the ladder” or achieve levels of success. But I know of many, many women that I look up to and have great respect for, that have achieved great levels of success on their own terms by being no one but themselves. [By] being honest and genuine about what they do and who they are. I honestly think regardless of who you are, that [honesty] should be at the heart of it. Being honest, being open, doing the right thing, being fair. I think that for some reason that seems so hard to achieve, but it's just not. Just do the right thing by people, be fair in your dealings, try to always consider other people's point of view. You might not agree with it, but you have to consider it. Be a reasonable and good person in the world. It’s easy to say that should get you everywhere (it doesn't) but I'd like to think that it helps.
Chelsea: Some people don't have enough confidence to go to a gig by themselves, or they wouldn't feel confident sitting at a restaurant eating dinner by themselves. They wouldn't feel confident asking somebody out for a glass of wine or a coffee. So to be able to ask a band, can I manage you takes a lot of confidence to be able to step into an executive director position, it's a lot of confidence.
Cath: I've done a lot of personality tests in my time and had a lot of people, you know, analyze as you do when you do various things through life, and I'm actually an introvert. I'm naturally introverted.
Chelsea: You can be a confident introvert though?
Cath: You can, but I think my propensity is to want to be less social than more social, but I've thrown myself into an incredibly social world. I mean you couldn't get more social than our industry! I think that that's been really good for me: facing [my] fears. If you feel under confident or you feel in some way you're not deserving. I think everybody's deserving. I think you have to look at what what's holding you back and what you fear and then (I hate sounding like a cliche, but) facing it.
I hate public speaking. I hate public speaking! And I'm in this position now where I've been put into so many situations where I've had to public speak that. It's amazing how after a while, you're just have to front up and just do it and overcome the thing that you fear the most. Give it a try, it might not be as bad as you think.
Chelsea: I love that, yeh I love that. Also the fake it till you make it, I guess.
Cath: Yeah the fake it till you make it. I think we all feel like we're faking it till we make it right? It comes back to that imposter syndrome thing. I often sit back and think, “I just don't know what I'm doing. Why do people think I know what I'm doing? I've got no idea what I'm doing or how I managed to convince people for this long that I've got any idea.” Seriously. I think that quite often, and I think a lot of people do. And that's the thing that probably comforts me the most is that I'm not the only person that probably feels that way.
Chelsea: No. And apparently imposter syndrome hits higher achieving people more.
Cath: I've heard this also from somebody who works with a lot of leaders, a lot of people who lead and apparently it's a very, very big, hallmark of people in leadership positions.
Chelsea: Which is really interesting. I think there's a few things you can do: Becoming (as much as you can) an expert in your area. If you know what you're talking about and you know your subject matter, then I feel like that should give you some sort of confidence that you know what you're talking about. I'm not confident in something I don't know anything about! [Laughter]
Cath: Yeah, I'm with you too. I've often been placed in situations where I feel like people are having conversations that are well above my intelligence level and I’m often like “Oh, well, okay. Right!” [laughter] And the thing is, if you really work at it, you can get there and you can be on that level as well. I don't think you necessarily have to be particularly bright, you just have to work hard. If you don't naturally have a gift (like you easily get along with people or public speaking etc), I think you have to just work hard at it.
I also do think, being a woman who has had other women to look up to and talk to as well [is important]. I've had some incredible women through my career who I've been able to have confidential conversations with, and who have been really helpful and really encouraging and have really helped me be able to keep on going through it all when things have gotten tough.
Chelsea: That's brilliant. What do you think some of the best advice you've ever received is?
Cath: Not actually caring what other people think and just trusting your instincts. Your gut instinct is super, super important. Again, being honest and genuine in your dealings. Being fair and being able to listen as well to people instead of having to talk all the time, just listening sometimes is all you need to do.
Chelsea: I've got a couple of big questions for you. What do you think the next steps are for the Australian music industry recovering from COVID?
Cath: Oh God, I've got no idea! [laughter]
Honestly, I don't think the answers are there yet. I think we're still really in it and I think that it will become apparent probably over the next 12 months, but I think we all feel the need to move that process along a lot quicker than it's actually going to move and I understand why that is, because we all need that certainty and that idea that we know what's coming.
I think a part of being really strong and resilient (at this point too), is being able to admit when the answers are still not there, and I think that they're not just yet.
Chelsea: And what change do you hope to see?
Cath: I'd love to see all sorts of things change Chelsea! [laughter]
I'd love to see a fairer, more sustainable robust career path for artists, with more sustainable income streams, that are more equitable. How would that look? I've got no idea.
How could that happen? I have no idea, but I think we have to consider that at the heart of our ecosystem is the artist and their creative output. And we have to respect that and we have to support them in whatever way we can. And that would require at this point, I think digging deep and looking at the structure and the systems we have in place in general. How do they work for an artist and how do they not work for an artist and what needs to change. How can we change it? I don't think we have all the answers to that. Big question, it's a big question!
Chelsea: And talking about those systems and structure, the music industry is really known for having a lot of issues with sexism, and I think in post #metoo Australia, there's a lot more conversations happening and quite a few call outs happening but we're still quite far away from a level playing field. Have you had to deal with a lot of sexism or how would you deal with it if you did experience that?
Cath: Oh over the years absolutely I have. In all sorts of weird ways. I've had to encounter them and also conversely I have encountered the opposite of that. Lots of people holding me up and pushing me forward. So it's been a bit of both. At the moment, I find it really interesting listening to a lot of people's stories of abuse and mistreatment and that can be both physical and psychological. And I really feel it because I've experienced that too. It's true. From the time I started in music, I’ve had all sorts of inappropriate physical and psychological abuse, that I probably just accepted. And in some ways it's also made me the person I am and I don't mind the person I am. It doesn't excuse the behavior though.
Are we in a better place than we were? Absolutely! I can't tell you how much better positioned we are now than we were 20 years ago. It's just not even the same landscape. I think it's been really empowering to see so many people coming out and supporting each other in this and doing that so publicly and having all of the community around them.
Chelsea: It is really scary though, as an artist or someone working in the industry, to want to step forward and speak publicly because there's that fear of a backlash. “If I speak out I'll never get booked again. Will I be labeled as a difficult person?”
Cath: Yeh and you know I think that that's so brave, but also very necessary. Those people help us all.
Cath: I have one more question for you. Particularly as you worked for Mushroom and also Warner for a time, did you get to meet Kylie?
Chelsea: I never got to meet Kylie. I did work on a particular album that she did a performance on, and the session that she did, this particular performance, it was an album called ‘Corroboration’. It was a collaboration between contemporary Australian artists and first nations artists at the time. They came for there and they wrote together and they did duets and some of them were covers as well. And Kylie did a song with Jimmy Little, the legendary late Jimmy Little, and it was a beautiful, beautiful song. I’m pretty sure it was the cover of his called ‘Bury Me Deep In Love’. And I really wanted to go to that session. I can't tell you how much I wanted to go to that session, but I was down the chain. There were other people further up the chain that went to that one. But I would have loved to have [met Kylie], I've heard a lot of wonderful things actually about her.
Chelsea: I just, I really want to meet her [laughs] so I though it’s within that degree of separation, I’m like “did you meet her!?”
Cath: Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you Chelsea, the closest brush with Kylie that I ever had was when I was 15 at Target in Camberwell! That's the closest brush I've ever had with Kylie Minogue.
Chelsea: Oh yeah, because she was a Camberwell girl. Didn't she work at Blockbuster or Video-Easy or one of those? [laughing]
Cath: I remember that too! Video-buster or something down there! [laughing]
Chelsea: Oh, well, thank you so much Cath for chatting with me. It's really appreciated.
Cath: Thank you for having me!
Chelsea: That was my conversation with the wonderful Cath Haridy. You can find out more about Cath and the AAM by checking the links in the show notes. You've been listening to Control. This episode was produced by Chelsea Wilson and edited by Amy Chapman. We support from City of Melbourne's COVID-19 Arts Grants.
This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Kulin nation with respects to elders past, present and emerging. Until next time, be kind to each other. This is Chelsea Wilson signing off.
