A group of NW songwriters recently challenged themselves to write 20 songs in 24 hours, a writing exercise designed to shake you out of your comfort zone and stop you from editing yourself too much. One of the participants was Eric Anderson, better known as Cataldo, and the results of this experiment can be found on his third and latest album Literally Main Street.
The songs tap into Anderson's past. Via a press release, he says he "kept thinking of people I grew up with in Idaho, things that had happened to me, characters and situations from that era of my life. ‘What should happen next?’ was always answered by ‘well, what would they have done?’ if not ‘what did they actually do?’ I think I just now have the distance to write about that time with some wisdom and perspective."
Recorded at Tiny Telephone Studios with revered producer (and excellent songwriter in his own right) John Vanderslice, Literally Main Street is a touching portrait of Anderson's past. “I tried to write songs about what it was really like growing up in a weird small town,” he adds, “not a tarted up banjo-and-suspenders version of what people imagine it might be like.”
