Nov 14, 2008  |  By: AMY CAVANAUGH  | COMMENTS     

In a world wracked by war and a sinking economy, singer Catie Curtis is still looking on the bright side.

Curtis, who released “Sweet Life,” her ninth album, in September, says she wrote this album “because it was what I needed to hear right now.” Curtis plays Alexandria’s Birchmere a week from today.

“We’re in dark times, and I realized that I’ve been on a long path of getting to this place in my life,” she says. “I’ve been living a pretty sweet life within my personal life that’s set against this backdrop, and I want to take this record and celebrate the good things that are going on.”

Curtis senses her audience feels similarly.

“I notice in my audience that people are scared and anxious and they need a way to find resilience,” she says.

Curtis, a lesbian, describes her new album as “more warm and full” than her previous records. It includes a cover of a Death Cab for Cutie song, “When Soul Meets Body.”

“I love their version and I covered it live one night for kicks and the response from my audience was great,” she says. “Most didn’t know that it wasn’t my song, so I wanted to introduce the band to them. The song fits on this record because it’s about living in the moment and being very present. It’s a theme in my songs now, tuning out all the chaos in your life.”

Curtis thinks that with the election of Barack Obama as the next U.S. president, some of the darkness could be lifting.

“It gives all of us hope that the story’s not over because we’ve begun to lay the groundwork for change,” she says. “Sometimes it takes time to see the victory and I’m hoping the same is true for gay rights. In some ways it’s weird how we kind of accept these defeats, but I think in 20 years we’ll look back and say, ‘I can’t believe a law like that would pass in our country.’”

Curtis grew up in Maine and now lives near Boston, where she married her partner, Liz, in 2005. The couple has two adopted daughters. Curtis was on tour in California when ads were running in support of Proposition 8, the successful marriage amendment that reversed May’s state Supreme Court ruling that temporarily legalized same-sex marriage there.

“They were referring in the ads to Massachusetts being a place where the idea of gay marriage is being forced on the parents of young children in schools,” she says. “My experience, and I think my straight friends in Massachusetts would agree too, is that the only thing that’s spread is a sense of dignity and respect for all citizens of Massachusetts regardless of sexual orientation.

“When I saw those ads that inferred that there was something wrong with Massachusetts, it reminded me of the attack ads that the Republican Party used in the presidential campaign, and as we know those didn’t work. I think in the long run, the desire for justice and dignity for all people is going to win out over these negative scare tactics.”

Besides putting out her new album and touring, Curtis has been busy with Aspire to Inspire, her program that gives guitars to kids who want to learn to play but can’t afford to. She said the idea for the program came from her own life.

“When I was 15, I was having trouble connecting with people and think it was because I was going through the inner process of figuring out that I was gay,” she says. “A woman in my hometown gave me a guitar and said that I could have it if I promised to learn how to play it. To me it was an invitation to learn to connect with people.

“The woman left my hometown of Saco, Maine, shortly after and I was never able to thank her for changing my life. I have been trying to find a way to pay it forward.”

Curtis says she’s grateful for the opportunity to have had music as an outlet for her emotions when she was starting to come out.

“Even when I was not ready to reveal all the facts about myself, I was always comfortable revealing the emotions behind the facts of my life,” she says. “I think that as an artist being able to connect with people is to mine the universal emotional experiences that help us figure out our relationships and our place in the world. And that to me was really gratifying when as a young person ...