luckyPRICK

Creation of "Swamp Pop" Is Holiday For These Cats

West Side Sun News, June 4 1998
By Peanuts
Transcribed by Robert Ferent

Scans:

"I sort of like the term 'Swamp Pop'", West park guitarist Denis DeVito said the other night when I sat down with him to talk about the band he's with, Cats on Holiday, and its new compact disc, "Shake This!".

"We like Cajun music - we have a washboard player - but we are not a zydeco band," he emphasized.

"Swamp Pop is a little bit of Cajun music with Cleveland rock," he said. "The Iguanas were a good match up for us when we opened for them recently at Wilbert's in the Warehouse District."

To step back for a minute, DeVito got is musical inspiration from an unusual source while growing up in Lakewood.

"I got it listening to WIXY-AM when I was a kid," he said, "and my sister, Marybeth, who could name every song and who it was by. She always wanted to have inter-family trivia contests, knowing she'd win."

"She wanted to see Jimi Hendrix when she was 16, and my parents, Dan and Anne, wouldn't let her go," he said. "But I'd say mostly listening to old tunes on WIXY 1260."

"My dad was a purchasing agent and would always get stuff because of it," DeVito said. "One year, he got a cheap guitar, and I started messing around with that. I took a few lessons as Educators Music in Lakewood."

"From there, I wound up in Lucky Pierre with Kevin McMahon, circa 1977. He had a ton of songs and could never get a band together, so we did, with me playing bass.

"There was no place to play in those days," he said, "except the punk clubs like Pirate's Cove in Lakewood, when Tony Shable owned it. We were playing with Pere Ubu, The Styrene Money Band, and The Cool Marriage Counselors.

"Around 1980, the second version of the band broke bigger," DeVito said, "when I switched to guitar and Tom Lash, now known for Hot Tin Roof, cam in to play bass. We were the second local act to play a Coffeebreak Concert for WMMS-FM."

"Matt The Cat threatened not to emcee it that day because we were a punk band," DeVito said. "Len Goldberg said, "If you don't do it, I will, because they are not a punk band." Len Goldberg and Denny Sanders, the latter now with WMJI-FM, were always in our corner. We finally threw in the towel around 1982."

After he gave up playing to get married and raise a family, Cats On Holiday - which also includes Rocky River bassist Chuck Ellis, Parma drummer Rich Ellis, and two more Cleveland residents, guitarist Bull Fury and buttonbox/sax man Steve Frieg - became this decade's project.

"Steve and I started getting together over at his house," DeVito said. "We eventually filled up the lineup by 1995, so we started playing out."

"We played as much as any band in the city, 95 percent originals, three sets a night - everything from private parties at the zoo, to Dick's Last Resort in the flats, to opening for national acts at the Rib Burn-Off."

And that leads us up to "Shake This!", Cats on Holiday's first full-length disc.

"We had a cut on the AROARA compact disc last year," DeVito said. "It's a shame it got buried and nothing happened. We recorded at Magnetic North Studios in Cleveland, behind the hands of Chris Keffer, who did a phenomenal job. We tried a couple of other studios, knowing what we wants, and couldn't capture it. Keffer did."

With the disc headed to My Generation and Border's Books in Westlake and all the Record Exchanges, airplay was the next subject.

"It would be nice to get a little airplay," DeVito said, "but our music is considered triple-A format - Adult Album Alternative. The closest commercial station with that format is in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. That's the station I listen to. We're still sending it out to the radio stations, though."

And where did the name come from?

"three guys in the group are huge Kinks fans," DeVito said. "We think Ray Davies is the best writer ever. If you open up the "Muswell Hillbillies" album, there's a picture of Ray and his brother Dave sitting in a bar and, above them, are the words "cats on Holiday". That's where we got it."

DeVito closed up with, "Cats On Holiday is a great vehicle for writing songs. We've got enough material for three more discs. It would be nice to find a smaller record label that wants to work with us. Do we think we're rock stars? Heck, no."

"I've come to a point in my life where I used to just work, work, work," DeVito said. "Now, it's just work a little bit, raise my kids, play music, and have fun."

In other words, he's another "cat" out on an extended holiday.

CATS ON HOLIDAY

Creation of "Swamp Pop" Is Holiday For These Cats