CATHOUSE RULES

by Dave Good


San Diego Reader Review
Press Kit 15

A short reprieve: today does not actually mark the end of summer. Actually, summer concludes on September 22, according to Will Faeber.

That’s the day he and his band Cathouse Thursday host what he calls the official End of Summer party. They’ve been doing it for years. He’d like to extend an invitation. Technically, it is a house concert. Just find him on Facebook, he says, and tell him you’re coming.

The name alone might convince a reader that Cathouse Thursday is an Americana-tinged country rock band. What it won’t reveal is that it was inspired, in part, by the collapse of jazz.

“I toured with Steve, son of Stan Getz,” the famed tenor sax man, Will Faeber says. The younger Getz is a drummer. “In the five years I played with him, I saw the jazz world dying. All the jazz clubs we played closed.”

Faeber course-corrected just a bit and expanded his musical reach. I hear country for sure in the Cathouse book, but I also hear wisps of jazz horns and jazz stylings, and it all seems to work together. Are any other such unlikely pairings on the horizon?

“I haven’t done hip hop yet,” he says, “but I have worked with some beats.”

Faeber lives in Encinitas, but much of his career success has been in Europe and elsewhere. For example, Cathouse Thursday were voted best band last year at the annual Rockfest at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas

Country/Americana was big business for Faeber in the UK. “I played Wembley twice.” His first hit record was in Europe in 1997 where he toured behind No Small Comforts for three years. “It was ahead of it’s time. And, it’s pretty danceable. That’s what made it take off.”

His career stalled on the record that he in fact just released with a party at Anthology. Walking My Elephant was recorded a dozen years ago but got shelved after the owner of Faeber’s record label had a heart attack.

The label chief could no longer work in the industry, but, he refused to release ownership of his label’s catalog nor Faeber from his contract.

Instead, the Euro-success story on hold sat in a house in Malibu and “looked at the surf” for a few years.

“Lawyers were involved.”

Years later, the singer/songwriter finally gained control of the record, and the rest is history.

Will Faeber is working on a follow-up that he says will be out by Christmas. “It will be a vocal album,” he says, a la Crosby Stills and Nash.”