caitlin Sherman

Debut Self-Titled Album

‘I’m told to go it alone and just forget / you can love the song but you just can’t love the man’

“I was alone, unpacking boxes in the strange old craftsman I rented a room in during my divorce. Out of nowhere my computer turned on and started playing Townes Van Zandt’s ‘For the Sake of the Song’.  I shivered. I melted. I picked up my guitar and wrote ‘If Not The Man’”

Years later, in an "about damn time" kind of moment, Seattle based singer-songwriter Caitlin Sherman is stepping out solo. She’s had her fair share of collaborations over the years, most notably the cosmic psych rock of Evening Bell and the hazy noir of Slow Skate. As a songwriter and arranger in both projects, she also held the role of girlfriend and wife. Now she is neither.

Active in the Seattle music scene since moving to the city in 2001 as a teen, she has done everything from vocals/lyrics on electronic projects (Lusine, A Certain Distance), sung harmonies and leads for bar room honky tonk (The Country Lips, The Swerangens), written string arrangements for her own projects as well as others, to playing ambient sets with an old toy piano and a handful of pedals (bellandrone).

Her debut self-titled album is a meditation on love lost and carving out a new independent path. Dark contemplative songwriting explored through fresh unpredictable pop sensibility, dripping with art and purpose. And while past projects incorporated vast soundscapes and string arrangements written by Sherman herself, she made the decision to stick to a set band sound making sure the song itself was the centerpiece. 

Longtime friend Colin J Nelson produced, mixed and engineered the album in his Fremont studio Her Car. The pair worked to carve out a sound that protected the intimacy of the lyric and emotion with a studio band that could react to those dynamic needs. Personnel, both on the album and live setting, include Jason Merculief on drums (J Tillman, Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter, Alela Diane, Sera Cahoone), Bill Patton on guitar (Fleet Foxes, J Tillman) and Jesse Harmonson on bass (Jaime Wyatt, The Crying Shame).

Caitlin Sherman has opened for roots rockers to country queens and everything in between including Justin Townes Earl, Frazey Ford, Orville Peck, SUSTO, Esme Patterson, Liza Anne, Banditos, Ruby Boots, All Our Exes Live In Texas, Valley Queen, Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside, Matt Dorrien, Barna Howard and Izaak Opatz. And with Evening Bell she has shared bills with Wanda Jackson, Howe Gelb, Kyle Craft, The Moondoggies, Jessica Lea Mayfield and Jaime Wyatt.