The Jefferson Starship will appear at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Sunday, June 25th at 8pm. Cathy Richardson, their lead singer, is a continuation of the explosive-type singer the group’s original lead singer Grace Slick was, with some added skill caveats like her guitar playing. In an interview with hamptons.com, the very talented Cathy Richardson revealed why she thinks folks who enjoyed Jefferson Airplane’s and Jefferson Starship’s hits should see the show. The band is Jefferson Starship, not some tribute band. The actual DNA of Paul Kantner and Grace Slick will be on the Westhampton Beach stage.
Cathy Richardson has performed on the East End before in a production of Love Janis over 20 years ago. She said she enjoyed “living in the guest house of Julie Andrews’ daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton,” while starring in that show. When she first started with the Starship, Paul Kantner (original founder of Jefferson Airplane) was playing guitar. She said, “I played with Paul Kantner in the Starship for eight years before he passed away.”
She started playing guitar as soon as “I was old enough to get my hands around a guitar. I placed the guitar flat on my lap because my hand was too small to reach all the way around the neck. My mom had a baritone ukulele, so I really started on that because my hands could fit around that… I taught myself both keyboards and guitar.”
How did she end up as the lead singer for the Starship? “It goes back to me being a rock singer in Chicago. I had a band with a massive following in Chicago. We played a million gigs; they played us on the radio.” That transitioned to her playing the theater version of Janis Joplin’s shows. After some Janis shows Off-Broadway, she did some in San Francisco. Sadly, that was after some major life changes, including her mother’s death. Invited to tour with Big Brother and the Holding Company for the 40th anniversary of the “Summer of Love,” things changed. On that tour was Jefferson Starship. She recalls, “That’s where I first met them, and they heard me sing. The following year they asked me to join Jefferson Starship. That’s where I have been since 2008.”
As for a Grace Slick connection, Cathy Richardson said, “Yes, Grace, yes. I have been to her house; I went out with her, I rapped with her, she is amazing. She came to a show in California and sat in the front row. It was wild. I thought, ‘This is so weird; Grace Slick is listening to me singing ‘White Rabbit.’ I sat down on the stage right in front of her and sang it directly to her because, like, who else am I going to sing it to? She was smiling, and I jumped back up on stage, and we hugged, and someone snapped a photo of us. For me, that still is the most iconic moment of my life.”
Ms. Richardson hung out with China Kantner, Paul Kantner, and Grace Slick’s daughter (born 1971). The story goes, “We were watching a women’s march on television when I told China, ‘I want to watch this with your mom.’ So, we went downstairs, and she was blown away by it (the protest on TV) and said, ‘This is just like the sixties. We thought Nixon was bad; look where we are; you’ve got to keep going.’ Grace Slick and Cathy Richardson then actually collaborated on a song titled “It’s About Time,” inspired
