John Bommarito: You're listening to The Song Break on 89.1 WEMU. I'm John Bommarito. Periodically, I bring guests to the program and talk about something I think is of interest to listeners of this program. Today, Caity Gyorgy is joining me via Zoom today. Welcome, Caity!
Caity Gyorgy: Thank you so much for having me, John.
John Bommarito: It's a pleasure to meet you virtually. Maybe I'll even meet you in person when you come to the Blue LLama Jazz Club later this year.
Caity Gyorgy: Yeah, I can't wait for that show. I'm really excited.
John Bommarito: Have you played there before?
Caity Gyorgy: No. The only time I've ever played in Michigan was with my friend Olivia Van Goor.
John Bommarito: Our friend, Olivia Van Goor.
Caity Gyorgy: Our friend. Wonderful. She's the best.
John Bommarito: She is the best. I've gotten the privilege of getting her singles before they're released, now. She's starting to think of me on the Tuesday when she's releasing something on a Friday. “Oh, I should probably send that to John.” So, yeah…
Caity Gyorgy: All right. She's the best.
John Bommarito: She is great. Regular listeners of this program have heard your music since our mutual friend Olivia made me aware of you actually. I bought whatever CDs were available from your website at the time and have been keeping an eye out for more since then. And well, now, there's a sassy new album called "You Irritate Me So", which I am certain is the reason for the Blue LLama Jazz Club date on November 8th as the tour and the album that must be the reason you're going out and that's with your friend Mark, right?
Caity Gyorgy: Yes, well I'll be doing that one with quartet, so Mark and I will do a couple pieces from "You Irritate Me So", but what I really love to do when I'm going on tour is prep music for a new album that I will be recording in January. So, it'll be all new original music and arrangements, and of course some of my favorite ones that I've recorded before, and like stuff I've already done. But I love the opportunity to get to play and get to know the music before I go into the studio, and I feel so much more confident in my recordings when I have that opportunity so I'm using Blue LLama as a way to introduce audiences to what's coming next.
John Bommarito: We're your guinea pig. Nice.
Caity Gyorgy: Yes, exactly. We'll see what's going to make the record.
John Bommarito: Well, we've been schooled on how to pronounce your last name. I want to make sure I'm getting Mark's last name right. Limacher?
Caity Gyorgy: Limacher. He's going to tell you he doesn't really care, and he doesn't. He says it's a fake name. Long story short, the family, they wanted to get to Ellis Island. There were quotas that had already been met from Italy, so they got a fake last name from someone else to immigrate many, many years ago.
John Bommarito: Nice. That's a fun backstory. I did not know. Uh, he's been a collaborator on several records with you, actually. In fact, I just found one this week that's only available in Japan, and I...
Caity Gyorgy: I know, yeah.
John Bommarito: Why is that the case?
Caity Gyorgy: Because the rights are so challenging to find for two of the songs on the Frank Loesser album. There's two songs that I think the only recordings that exist are Frank Loesser’s that he did on an evening show that was recorded where he's playing piano and singing, and then Mark and I's recordings. I can't find the rights to two of these songs, meaning I can press them. Because I do all the CD pressing myself, I go through our version of the Harry Fox agency up in Canada called the CMRRA and I pay for all he rights to press these things. I send it to the CD company I use in Toronto and this one has been really challenging. So, I need to ask my label in Japan how they got that because they pressed it and it seems to be fine.
John Bommarito: Either they don't care or they're getting around the rules by not asking permission and begging forgiveness instead.
Caity Gyorgy: I think maybe that's what I have to do, because I do really like that record, and you know, I do have the CDs already, like, planned out, all of the art is done. It's just finding the rights and securing the rights is one heck of a task.
John Bommarito: I respect you for doing it the right way.
Caity Gyorgy: Thank you.
John Bommarito: I'm sure the songwriter would too. Well, frankly, I was a little afraid to talk to you because “I Hate Men,” “You Irritate Me So” these are song titles that make me like, is she going to be nice to me?
Caity Gyorgy: We've gotten so much feedback on that song, specifically, the “I Hate Men”, which is written by Cole Porter, who was in fact a man. And that one's so funny. It's from Kiss Me Kate, which in the show Kiss Me, Kate, there's a production happening within the show of Taming of the Shrew. And so the Catherine character does not want to get married. And she sings this song as a form of protest for not wanting to get married within Taming of the Shrew within Kiss Me Kate. And that's where that comes in. That's why we do it sort of as like a fugue type sort of thing as well, as an homage to the original. But that one is, it's hilarious. And the lyrics, if you do listen to them, they're not actually that bad. It's like, there's one that says, “Of course I'm awfully glad that mother had to marry father,” or, “but sister, you must answer too. What would we do without them?” You know, so it's this like reluctant juvenile sort of thing that I think most young women go through at some point.
SONG SAMPLE: “I HATE MEN”
Caity Gyorgy: Nobody really does this one. I wonder why. But we just thought it was so funny, so we wanted to. And when we do these albums like with our Jerome Kern and our Frank Loesser album, we always try to find the deep cuts that people haven't really done or that aren't, you know, there aren't a million recordings that Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald have already done to perfection. So…
John Bommarito: That makes sense. You're competing with some bigwigs there.
Caity Gyorgy: Oh yeah, and there is no competition. Like, between... I'll listen to Sinatra sing anything.
John Bommarito: Right. Well, hundreds of Cole Porter songs to pick from. How did you narrow it down to these ones? Other than the try not to do the ones that everybody else has already done.
Caity Gyorgy: It was challenging. I did a lot of deep dives through the entire discography, through different songs. What I like to do, especially if I'm pressed on time, is go for titles. So obviously, “I Hate Men” stuck out. “You Irritate Me So” stuck out as well, because I think that's cute and funny. And Audrey Morris, who's a wonderful singer, had a really great recording of that. And my manager, Celine, that was her Aunt Audrey, who was like a friend of the Peterson family, which was even more special.
SONG SAMPLE: “YOU IRRITATE ME SO”
Caity Gyorgy: It's kind of like, how do we find the songs that haven't been done? I mean, those songs that are popular are popular for a reason. They're great songs. The songs that aren't as popular, you kind of have to go deep into the musicals that he was writing for or into the parties that he wrote for in the case of Miss Otis Regrets, which was a song that he wrote at a party. And that one is so fascinating to me because it's this wonderful idea of, you know, a society woman, who is destined to politeness no matter what, and she has this tragic accident. She dies. She gets killed by the mob, and yet her butler still says, oh she regrets she's unable to lunch today. She's never lunching again. Oh, but still this idea of politeness is just so funny, it's clever, and just that darkness, that morbidness surrounding that song is hilarious. He does such a great job of just making it so unreal, I think.
SONG SAMPLE: “MISS OTIS REGRETS”
John Bommarito: No physical release for this particular record "You Irritate Me So", as of yet?
Caity Gyorgy: As of yet, not really. Well, in Japan, it will be released in the fall. My Japanese label is very, very proactive and I'm grateful to them for that. I do the physical for myself here. And so I haven't…I just haven't had time, but I'm thinking when I do release this one on physical, I'll do this one and the Frank Loesser one as well. Just have all of them because people keep asking about it. And I love CDs. I have a whole stack of CDs. I've got boxes of CDs everywhere. Uh, so people still use CDs and I love that, but it's just shipping them and then keeping a box of at least 250 of them in 484 square foot apartment is a bit of a challenge, especially when you're up to release number… I think I'm on seven or eight or something like that. So, there's thousands of CDs in my apartment right now. Many of them are people that I love. Most of them are mine.
John Bommarito: Caity Gyorgy is my guest today on The Song Break on 89.1 WEMU. Well, I didn't ask anything about you. Tell me a little about you, you grew up in Calgary, is that correct?
Caity Gyorgy: I did. I grew up in Calgary, not to a musical family, but there was a piano in the house which was nice so I would mess around. I was in choirs all throughout High School. My mom put me in lessons when I was a child, but I did choir all throughout High School, so chamber choir, concert choir, vocal jazz choir. I adored singing all the time and I thought in my final year of schooling, you know what, I think I'd like to continue doing this. And so I applied for a program in Toronto called Humber College and the Bachelor of Music program there. I got in, I got a scholarship that made it possible for me to be able to go to school out of province and away from home. And I did my bachelor's degree there. I enjoyed the program immensely, made wonderful friends and great connections and loved living in Toronto. And then I graduated in 2020 when everything stopped but accepted admission to a master's program at McGill University in Montreal. And so I thought, well, this doesn't seem to be ending, so we might as well just do our master's degree now. So I went to Montreal, which is where I am right now, and I stayed and I have been here six years and I love it so much. It's a great city, very close to New York, Toronto, major airport, you know. It's great, but music has been a part of my life since I was a child and I've been studying it for years and years. The jazz bug took a hold of me at age 17 when I started dating a jazz drummer and then ended up really falling in love with the music and have stayed with the music for over a decade now.
John Bommarito: You anticipated my next question, who in your life led you to jazz? Because not a lot of folks in the younger generation are embracing jazz, so I'm glad that you are.
Caity Gyorgy: Ex-boyfriend.
John Bommarito: Well, thanks to him, whoever he was, we won't bring him up again, but just nice to know that somebody, well, I mean, it's worked out. Okay. Hasn't it?
Caity Gyorgy: It has! It was so funny though, one of the first dates that we had, I took him to a record shop in Calgary on one of my free periods during high school and when I finally got my little 1993 Honda Civic that I would drive around, I would go to this record store very close to the school and I would dig through the bins and I thought, okay, well I'll just take him here and see what he likes. And at that point, I was looking at the soul section, so I'm picking up the Otis Redding, the Martha Reeves records, that kind of stuff, that's totally what I was to. And he said, you should buy this record. And it was Birth of the Cool. And I said, okay, um, sure. I wanted to impress him at the time. It was a re-pressing, so it was like new. It was $40, sealed, so expensive for a kid who was working part-time at a home decor store. And I took it home and I listened to it and I hated it. I did not like it at all. I did understand it whatsoever. So, I really didn't get it. The way I fell in love with the music was through vocal jazz. It was something that I could understand with the voice and then. I remember listening to Ella Fitzgerald on “Blue Skies” with the huge long scat solo and I learned it immediately and that's when I thought, oh my God, this is so cool. I don't have to just like sing the lyrics. I can do this. And that's what kind of made me super interested in pursuing this was because I love the idea of being able to improvise and I love the challenge of that. And it still remains one of the hardest things that I have to do because it's not easy, but it's incredibly rewarding when I do make certain breakthroughs. I've been singing this for over a decade and I still feel like I'm trying to make breakthroughs. It's a never-ending lifelong pursuit.
John Bommarito: Well, because my first job right out of high school was a record store clerk/manager/ buyer, eventually, I have to ask, what was the first record you bought?
Caity Gyorgy: Oh my gosh! That's tough. I mean, I bought so many 45's because I could take them in my backpack a lot easier than other records. The first record that I remember special ordering was Amy Winehouse's Frank album. She's got covers on that of standards like “There Is No Greater Love.” I adored that record and I had made friends with the record store owner or the manager Lisa and I was asking her like, do you ever get this in? She's like no. But then she special ordered it for me, and so I was able to get it, and that was such a sweet thing that she did. I adored that record so much. That was, from going from soul to jazz, that was a really nice transitional record, and I... I know everybody likes Back to Black, but I think Frank is a much better record. I think it's very cool. She's got a lot of cool... She's like, she does “Moody's Mood For Love” on that one, which is kind of neat. I adore that record, so much, and it was the first one I bought. It was very expensive. I saved up for that one. But I was grateful to have gotten it.
SONG SAMPLE: “YOU’D BE SO NICE TO COME HOME TO”
John Bommarito: Well, pretty quickly in your own recording career, you received some pretty well-deserved recognition by receiving a Juno Award for Vocal Jazz Album of the Year in 2022. Then again, in 2023 and 2025, you just started in 2020, you said, right? And then you were starting to kind of pursue jazz. Is that right? Or is it a little earlier?
Caity Gyorgy: 2016 was when I decided I was going to go to school for jazz.
John Bommarito: Oh, that's right. Sorry.
Caity Gyorgy: I started working…well, I was releasing music in 2020. And 2019 was when I first started releasing music, like as singles. Then the pandemic happened and I couldn't work really much at all. So, I put all of my time and effort into trying to market myself online using social media and stuff like that, which ended up paying off quite a bit actually. I'm thankful I did that. I got very good at using Final Cut and Pro Tools, which is good. And then after I graduated McGill in 2022, I started working right away. And people often say, why are you still in Montreal? Like you're never there. And I'm like, well, I'm never there and I don't have an opportunity to move out. But, also, I don't wanna move out. But I'm so lucky that I've had all of these really wonderful opportunities since 2022. And it's kind of been nonstop for the last, like, you know, four or five years.
John Bommarito: Well, congratulations on all of your successes so far!
Caity Gyorgy: Thank you! Thank you!
John Bommarito: Last year's release was a pretty adventurous recording with strings. How long has that idea been brewing up in your head?
Caity Gyorgy: Since August, 2023. So that was years in the making because it was challenging to produce. Almost all of my albums I have self-funded. And so, every duo album I pay for, the quartet albums I've paid for, but in Canada we have access to these grants. And so, I did get a grant to help with my album ‘Featuring’, which won the Juno in 2023. And that was because every track had a guest artist on it. You know, I wanted to pay everybody really well. When you're doing a quartet album with, you know, three people, it's like you pay a day rate and it's, you're good, but when you're doing the rhythm section and then you have 12 guests, you’ve got to pay, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars more. So, I did a grant from Canada council to help out with that one. But this one I had to apply for a ton of different funding because it costs over a hundred thousand dollars, but it started because In 2023, Mark and I first started doing these small orchestra recordings together. And we did three songs in that recording session in August 2023. We did a song called “Perfect Time of Year” that I wrote, one called “There Goes,” and one called “Next Time.” I wrote all of them. “The Perfect Time of Year” though, was a holiday one, which did very well on Spotify and inspired us to keep doing holiday things so that we can use whatever revenue we get from those to go back into new projects. But as soon as I heard the strings... I remember being up in the booth because we recorded the rhythm section first and then the strings. We couldn't fit everybody in the same room. And I said to our wonderful engineer, Graham Lassard, I said, how much would it cost if we were to do this on a larger scale? How much studio time do you think we'd need? And I started planning a budget while Mark was conducting and they were recording. I started scribbling out what the idea of a budget would be and what kind of premises is I could go on with grant applications. What story are we telling? What's the catch? What's a way that we can get this funded and make it important to people on a jury? And so I started planning and writing grants in 2023 and 2024. I got denied for a bunch of them. And at a certain point I thought, oh my God, this album isn't going to happen. Like, I remember being…I had applied for this one grant for $70,000, which was ambitious, and I got denied all of it. And at that point, I had also been denied a $25,000 grant from the city that we were recording it in, and they wouldn't give me any feedback on the application. I called and they were supposed to, but they didn't. I was upset about that because I wanted to make it better for when I applied for more grants. But I did get this one $15,000 grant from the province of Alberta. And I was looking at a $100,000 project with a $15 thousand budget, and I thought, oh my God. When that $70,000 grant got declined, I took a very, very, very long walk into old Montreal, and I just sat on a bench for an hour. And then I walked back, and I looked into other sources of funding, and saw I had five days to do a grant for an organization called Factor. And so I spent the next five days working from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., at a Starbucks nearby, because they're the only place that would let me camp for that long. Drinking a ton of different kinds of coffees and teas. I made friends with the baristas all throughout this process. And I got $45,000 from them. So, I thought, "Okay, 60,000. We can make this work." I'll figure this out. I have a bunch of great gigs coming up. I can use all the money from the gigs. And then the day before we started recording, I applied for another grant from Canada Council. And since the first one with them was completely denied, I thought I'm going to change the story. I'm going to ask for less money. Let's see what happens. And I ended up getting that one after we had recorded but then I was able to pay off the line of credit that I had used to do make the recording happen. So that one was years in the making, but we had it and it wasn't just me working on this. Mark did all of the arrangements, we wrote the music together, we had wonderful help from our engineer Graham, our orchestra contractor Elisa, our wonderful video team Vicki and Phil, great catering from a local gluten-free place so It was a lot, but it ended up working out, but it was, my goodness, that was a really, really challenging and very scary at times thing to do because I didn't know how I was going to make it work.
John Bommarito: Well, in the end, it's out there, it exists, and hopefully it's a record that will pay for itself at some point.
Caity Gyorgy: Maybe not. Either way, that's okay.
John Bommarito: Yeah, you got it. My guest today on The Song Break on 89.1 WEMU is Caity Gyorgy. Can I guess that maybe the reason the next record was so sparse and just the two of you was financial, like you decided, I just spent all that money. I can do this next record a little bit. Yeah.
Caity Gyorgy: Yes, that's exactly the reason. I thought, okay, well, we just did, we did that. That was 40 people. Now we'll just go duo. We'll continue our songbook series. And now I'm excited to…I mean, we're doing more orchestral recording next month, actually, for a couple more holiday songs as we do. We've been doing this yearly now since 2023. So this is our fourth year of doing holiday recordings with an orchestra in Calgary, which I'm very proud to make happen. Yeah, it's not an album, just a few songs. It's far less than what an album costs.
John Bommarito: Well, I noticed on your web page there's an entire page dedicated to collaborations, including the one with Olivia, which is probably the first time I heard you sing is on that one. And I know you mentioned kind of putting these records together yourself, funding them yourself. What about maybe collecting all of those? Is there like 17 different collaborations onto a record and then fan funding it? I mean, people have turned to Kickstarter and things like that to put records out. The record is already made essentially, if you could just find a way to pay for the pressing by crowdsourcing it from fans who would probably want to own physical. It's just an idea. I mean the record’s done
Caity Gyorgy: That's a good idea. I mean, it is. I think I'd have to get a lot of permissions done for that.
John Bommarito: I mean, it'd be nice to have all those in one spot.
Caity Gyorgy: That's a good idea.
John Bommarito I'll reach out. I'll support you. All right, CaityGyorgy.com Georgie that comes Georgie is how it's spelled Which is why I said it that way. The website g y o r g y dot com if you're trying to find more information about Caity, you can do that there the date at the Blue LLama Jazz Club
Caity Gyorgy: It's dinner and a show!
John Bommarito: Hmm....
Caity Gyorgy: I have a lot of family in that part of Michigan, so I'm hoping that they'll come out to the show and I'll get to see them
John Bommarito: Whereabouts in Michigan is your family?
Caity Gyorgy: They're not in Detroit, but in surrounding areas. I think a couple of them actually were in Ann Arbor. I have a Great Aunt who's a riot, and if she's listening to this, her name is Helen. She's a wonderful, wonderful woman. I love her very much and she's incredibly supportive. I can't remember where she was living maybe Dearborn? Maybe somewhere I can’t remember, but I think she moved recently and I'm hoping that I'll get to see her because she's the best and a very wonderful supporter. Her brother is my grandpa who loved this kind of music so much. And unfortunately, he's passed away. But he loved this kind of music. And so, I always it's nice when I get to share it with his sister.
John Bommarito: Yeah. Well, what a nice conversation. I love meeting you even though this is virtual. You're just a delightful human being!
Caity Gyorgy: As are you!
John Bommarito: And I really enjoy your music. Like I said, I heard you and I'm like, "I have to buy all of the things I can find by her." I really like her voice and the way she approaches music.
Caity Gyorgy: Well, there will be more coming your way soon.
John Bommarito: Yay, that is good! All right. I look forward to seeing you at the Blue LLama. That's again, the date on that one is, it's in front of me somewhere and I've lost it. Uh-oh.
Caity Gyorgy: November 8th, November 8th.
John Bommarito: That's correct. There we go. All right, Caity. So nice to meet you. And people can look for your new record online at this point, only digital or streaming. I know from experience from other friends who are recording artists, streaming is not the best way to get your record paid back, but…
Caity Gyorgy: Right now, it's the only way.
John Bommarito: Right now, it's the only way. That's right. So, millions of streams will result in the recovery of her funds.
Caity Gyorgy: Yes.
John Bommarito: All right! Great to meet you!
Caity Gyorgy: Lovely to meet you too! Thank you!
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