Never Stop Growing: The story behind Cayetana’s New Kind of Normal album art
The cover photograph on Cayetana‘s New Kind of Normal depicts frontwoman Augusta Koch’s mother, Catherine Koch, jumping on a bed in her apartment. Eye-catching and full of joy, the image — taken by Philadelphia photographer Jess Flynn — holds a special significance to the band, who this year challenged themselves by launching their own label, Plum Records, to independently release their sophomore LP. In her own words, Augusta explains the significance of the picture, and its story behind it echoes the story of their album, which is out today.
My parents were married and lived in Germany for a long time. They were the age I am now, and there’s this awesome photo that I’ve seen my whole life of my mom jumping on a bed. My dad had taken it. Since then, my dad had passed away and my mom is obviously a lot older. But I really wanted to recreate that photo. We talked about using it a long time ago for a 7”, but it was such an old shitty print that it couldn’t have been blown up. And we were thinking about the name of the album, New Kind of Normal, and it seemed like a perfect photo: an older woman who’s still growing.
My mother is one of my best friends. And to see her still growing and still challenging herself in her mid-60s was such an incredible thing. She moved from the Poconos to Philly when she was 63 years old; she had worked at a job for 25 years that she had gotten fired from. And she was like “Fuck it. I’m gonna move to Philly, I’m gonna live on my own, I’m gonna live in West Philly and I’m gonna have this huge change.” It was like, is “it possible that I could respect my mother more?” And then that happened.
We can relate on all these things now that I’m an adult. I think it’s really important to showcase that age isn’t everything. We’re older musicians and age is something that resonates with us. And for her to be the cover, and for it to be such a vivacious picture…like, she literally broke her bed that day. She was jumping so hard that her bed collapsed, she got really into it and it was so cool to see my mom in this vulnerable state of “I want to do this.” And I love that record cover so much because, if there was a moral to the story, it would be this woman in her 60s jumping on her bed in a lab coat because she was a visiting nurse, and she’d been a visiting nurse for like 40 years caring for people, and she’s caring for herself and still growing.
I love it. She hates it. She’s mortified about it because she hates her photo being taken. But she did say, funniest quote ever, “I home I become as famous as the Nirvana baby.”
My mom bought me my first Weakerthans CD; my mom and I would drive around listening to the Weakerthans. I saw Tina Turner when I was in her womb. She would take me to see Ani Di Franco every summer. I know she loves it, it’s beautiful. She taught me so much, she loves our band so much. She is literally our biggest fan, she has a little Cayetana shrine in her apartment. She loves Kelly [Olsen, drummer] and Allegra [Anka, bassist] like they’re daughters, too. A lot of people don’t think about older people in the sense of how they’ve experienced all these crazy things and I love that this pic is a recreation of a picture from her being my age that encompasses this theme of the record being this new thing.
Cayetana celebrates the release of New Kind of Normal tonight at the First Unitarian Church; tickets and more information can be found at the XPN Concert Calendar.
Tour Dates
May 05 – First Unitarian Church – Philadelphia, PA
May 09 – University of New Hampshire (UNH) – Durham, NH
May 13 – Vassar College – Poughkeepsie, NY
May 26 – Mahall’s 20 Lanes – Lakewood, OH
May 28 – Smiling Moose – Pittsburgh, PA
Jul 06 – Songbyrd – Washington, DC
Jul 07 – Lizard Lounge – Lancaster, PA
Jul 08 – Paul’s Tavern – Belmar, NJ
Jul 09 – Great Scott – Allston, MA
Jul 17 – Mohawk Place – Buffalo, NY