Behind the Scenes With Little Hurricane
Little Hurricane, the San Diego blues duo made up of drummer Celeste "CC" Spina and guitarist Anthony "Tone" Catalano, met through a Craigslist ad only two and a half years ago. Shortly afterwards the duo were voted San Diego's Best New Artist. Since then they've sold their belongings, toured the country, had some luck and hit stages at Lollapalooza and ACL. "Really awesome," they say, "considering no one has heard of us." Rolling Stone got to know Little Hurricane during SXSW, where we hung out with them around Austin before they opened for M. Ward and the Shins on the Auditorium Shores stage.
"I played drums as a kid and wanted to find someone to be in a duo with," says Spina, a former culinary student, of posting the ad that attracted her music partner. The bewitching beauty, who describes herself as "very aware and very paranoid in general," says she got a lot of "creepy responses" and didn't respond to most.
By Charley Rogulewski
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Checkmate to a Music Mate
"Her Craigslist ad was pretty ridiculous," admits the soft-spoken and handsome Catalano. "You can tell she had training. She didn't write me back at first, so I wrote her again with more info. I included that I was in jazz band in high school." Catalano got Spina's attention with the words "jazz band."
"I knew that to be in jazz band you had to have talent," Spina says. "You have to be able to read music and play with a group of people." After a screening at the bar Spina worked at, the two got to work practicing. "I actually felt a really good vibe right away, just with the music we were discussing that we both liked," she says.
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Land Yacht
Their luck didn't stop there. "We get really good parking spots, too," says Catalano. "We call it Little Hurricane luck," adds Spina. The band make their way to their mode of transportation, a.k.a. their "Land Yacht."
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Little Hurricane Lantern
"I love all vintage stuff and that grimy feel," says Spina. The band's good luck charm? The white homemade speaker cabinet they bring to every show. "It's built into a little nightstand, and that's our light rig on it," jokes Catalano. Adds Spina: "The lamp is falling apart, but it's just character and I think our sound tries to mimic that." The antique setup also made its way onto their debut cover art.
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Little Hurricane Guidebook
Little Hurricane's debut, which drops this May, is titled Homewrecker. "I was trying to play music with people and most musicians are guys, so I was sort of dubbed 'homewrecker,'" Spina says. "Girls would say 'she's not a musician, she's a whore' – you know how girls can be, they just want to knock you down. It ended up in my car getting totally vandalized by a group of 30-year-old women."
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Ready to Brave the Storm
"I never knew we were going to be a duo," Catalano admits. "I just thought I'd start meeting drummers first."
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On Overpacking
"We have more stuff than most bands that we play with," Spina says of the duo's stage setup. "There's the mandolin and the mandolin amp," which she plays on the track "Give 'Em Hell." "He's got the slide guitar that he puts on his keyboards, plus keyboards, two guitars, a nightstand with a lamp. The drum kit is pretty massive. I do harmonica sometimes. He plays bass on the album."
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Those “Other” Duos
References to other girl/boy duos are expected. "I was definitely listening to a lot of the Kills before this," admits Spina. "I like the White Stripes, but as far as us, we don't wear red on stage. We love the bands, but we certainly don't try to be like them or copy their sound."
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Little Fish, Big Sea
"We came out here for SXSW last year, which was a really eye-opening experience," Spina recalls. "Like, wow! We are the smallest fish in the biggest sea right now." Having only booked four shows at random venues across Austin, Little Hurricane didn't give up. "We decided, 'OK, we got these shitty shows, we're not getting paid for them, we spent all our money on gas, let's hand out some flyers and CDs!" Spina stood on a corner and passed out their music before one landed in the hands of a Roadrunner Records employee. Less than two months later they were flown out to NYC to play the label's showcase at Webster Hall.
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Serving Up Flyers
Having survived the Craigslist tale, the group took to self-promotion. "At our first show we had over 100 people, but it helped that I had switched from cooking to bartending," says Spina. "I would just hand out flyers. That was my job when I was at the bar. If they sat down to get a drink, you were hearing about Little Hurricane and getting directed to our music."
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No Bad Energy
"I've never wrecked any homes," promises Spina. "I've never slept with any married men. There's no need for that. I don't want to bring that energy into my life. That's never been my agenda. I've never wanted to date a musician – I want to be a musician. Naming the album 'Homewrecker' just felt like 'screw you guys.' It seemed like such a perfect album title for a band called Little Hurricane."
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Up the Blues
"I used to play in a rock band and we'd jam on the blues in between rock songs," says Catalano. "That was the most fun. So with this band, I decided it is just gonna be fun. Let's start it off with the blues, but dirty blues. It's got to be dark and grimy, and that's kind of how our sound came about."
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These Boots Weren’t Made for Rockin’
"I take off my cowboy boots and socks before each show," Spina says. Sometimes she'll wipe her bleeding makeup away with her socks.
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Oomph
"Not all shows had 100 people at them off the bat," admits Spina. "We tried to do this big tour on our own, where we sold all our belongings and tried to spend a month in each city thinking we could just blow up each city. We didn't realize radius clauses, or that no one is going to pay you when you've never played in the city and no one knows you. We pushed through all that. I think we still try to give the same amount of energy and oomph no matter who is in the audience."
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Slide Guitar Blues
Little Hurricane's blues sound comes from Catalano's slide work and Spina's shuffles between bass drum and high hat cymbals. "It's a regular guitar, just flat with a slide," he says of his creation.
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Coolio’s Crocodile Tears
"We played a show in Vegas at this dive bar called Dive Bar," remembers Catalano. "A guy came up after and was like, 'Hey, I'm making a movie. Can you guys write a song for it? I have Coolio starring in it." Astonished, they obliged, later learning that Coolio is "a pretty decent actor."
In the flick, Coolio is conned by fake tears to commit murder, inspiring the Little Hurricane track "Crocodile Tears." The band liked the track so much they decided to put it on their debut. "We actually wrote it watching the film," says Spina. "We had everything set up in front of the screen."
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Mandolin Blues
"The mandolin was another thing I threw at her," Catalano tells Rolling Stone. The old-timey string instrument makes an appearance on the track "Give 'Em Hell." "He had this really old mandolin and taught me the part for that," says Spina.
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Ignorance Is Bliss
Spina sings on only a handful of tracks – "Crocodile Tears," "Give 'Em Hell" and "Shortbread." "I'm not a singer, never claimed to be a singer," she explains. "Within maybe two weeks of meeting him, he had me in a vocal booth."
"I'd be in the other room like, 'Is that crying?'" Catalano says.
"I was like, 'Yeah, I'm crying in here,'" Spina remembers. "'I can hear my voice, and it sounds terrible!' It was a really big struggle for me to get past that. The first year we played, I wouldn't let them put any vocals in my monitors. Ignorance is bliss."