Charlotte Yates "Beggar's Choice" 2008

In a professional musical career of nearly three decades, Charlotte Yates has worn a number of hats, both literally and figuratively. She was part of the comic-musical trio When The Cat’s Been Spayed, with their fruit-festooned headgear and high-camp renditions of Kiwiana classics such as ‘Taumarunui On the Main Trunk Line’.
She conceived and directed the large-scale recording and stage projects Baxter, Tuwhare and Ihimaera, based around the works of three of this country’s major literary figures. She has managed festivals and worked in different roles as an arts professional…

…Yet looking back, writing and performing original material has been the thread that runs through her work. “I never thought, ‘I’m going to be a singer-songwriter for the rest of my life’,” says Yates. “I didn’t have the grand master plan.” In 2017 she released her seventh solo album, Then the Stars Start Singing.
Curiously there was no pop music in the Yates household when she was growing up. The family radio was always tuned to the National Programme. Her father, Gavin Yates, presented the station’s children’s holiday series. He was also a minister. Charlotte’s early musical diet consisted largely of Anglican hymns.
At Waimea College in Richmond she learned piano and clarinet, but her academic focus was towards science. Though she felt drawn to music, “it was an adjunct to life really. Not what my destiny was going to be.” Still, an encouraging music teacher introduced her to jazz and the idea of improvisation. She wrote her first couple of songs on piano and – in those pre-Rockquest days – performed them in a school music competition.
She arrived at Massey University in Palmerston North in 1981 to study veterinary science. It was a turbulent time, politically and culturally. It was the year of the nationally divisive Springbok tour, but also a time when innovative post-punk bands were starting to appear on the national stage.
“We had all these people come through for Orientation. The Go-Betweens came through, Nick Cave with The Birthday Party, Hunters and Collectors, every Flying Nun band known to personkind. Split Enz with Blam Blam Blam up front was the first concert I ever went to. So I saw a lot of stuff and lapped it up. I wagged my first anaesthesia class to go and see Avant Garage.”
Around town, local band the Skeptics were trying out on audiences their art-noise experiments. Friends turned her onto Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks. Through student radio she discovered the likes of The Au Pairs, The Slits and Siouxsee and the Banshees. “The moment there was a woman in a band I was like ‘Who’s she? What’s she doing?’”
At some point a friend loaned her an acoustic guitar. “For veterinary practice I had to go and work on a sheep farm for six weeks, live in a little shearer’s cottage and help the farmer. And I had a book of Beatles songs and a nylon-string guitar and I learned ‘Eleanor Rigby’.”
Back at Massey, Yates met future filmmaker Christine Jeffs, who had already been in an arty indie band. (Their name, Yates recalls, was Insects That Jive Upon Crippled Grassblades.) “I had this interest in making songs up and Christine definitely had a sense of aesthetic.” The two began working on songs together, which led to performing as a duo calling themselves Putty In Her Hands.
Yates’s graduation as a qualified veterinarian coincided with the 1987 stock market crash. Suddenly professional work was scarce. Of the 63 people she had studied with, only one immediately walked into a job. Yates moved to Wellington, where musical opportunities seemed more plentiful than veterinary positions.
Putty In Her Hands recorded an EP for Jayrem, before expanding from a duo to a six-piece band with the inclusion of singer Jackie Clarke and rhythm section of drummer Neil Cruikshank and bassist Gerard Tahu. The formerly acoustic songs sprouted bigger, funkier arrangements. The band performed regularly, including an appearance in the 1990 Rock The Quota concert (later released on video).
Though Yates eventually found full-time veterinary work, the requirements of switching between being Dr Yates and Charlotte Yates: rock musician, just seemed “too schizophrenic”. She lasted six months as a vet…to be continued... - audioculture

trax:
1. Swing Door 2. All Roads Lead to Rome 3. Black Water 4. When You and I Were Blind 5. Given Up 6. Gifthorse 7. Blood Red Moon 8. Heaven Scent 9. Burn 10. Lost 11. Look for You 12. Beggar's Choice 13. Mad 14. Before the Blue Begins (Bonus)
…served by Gaius…