Carrying St. Germain name an honour and a burden

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This article was published 07/11/2024 (345 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Catie St. Germain has big shoes to fill.

So big, in fact, that they nearly caused her to walk away from her own musical aspirations.

“There’s a lot of (people) that have a lot of talent in my family,” says the granddaughter of the late Métis country music icon Ray St. Germain. “I admire them so much and I’m so glad that I grew up with that. But in this other sense, I kind of felt like I could never live up to it.”

As a teen, St. Germain wrote songs, participated in singing contests and performed regularly with her grandpa and the family band.

“But then somewhere along the line I just got totally scared to put myself out there,” says the now 35-year-old, who describes herself as a shy kid who has struggled with anxiety for most of her life.

She stepped away from the spotlight to focus on her career as an early childhood educator and start a family. Becoming a mother was a turning point in more ways than one.

St. Germain has three sons, aged nine, seven and three. Her eldest, Sebastian, was born with Down syndrome. As a new parent caring for a special needs child while juggling a full-time job, St. Germain’s mental health began to suffer. Something had to give.

She left child care and found herself faced with an age-old question: “What do I want to do with my life?” she recalls.

Music came trickling back in. She started singing at weddings and cocktail lounges, and joined Snake Oil, a touring cover band, in which she performed as Joan Jett and other female rockers. It was nice to be onstage again, but it wasn’t exactly the music career she envisioned.

“If I’m going to be away from home touring, I want it to be for myself,” says St. Germain, who lives in Niverville.

It was her son Sebastian who gave her the push she needed to return to the vulnerable world of songwriting.

“We’re on this journey of learning what it is to have somebody with special abilities in our family,” she says. “He’s so brave and courageous and he works really hard at everything he does. I realized that if I want him to (continue to) do that, I need to do that too.”

She got to work writing and released her first single, The Taxman, early last year. The croony country song — which opines on love in the face of life’s hardships — amassed 10,000 Spotify streams in its first month and earned St. Germain the Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Manitoba Country Music Awards.

She put out her debut EP, Cleaning House (or Trying), this year and has continued to watch the accolades roll in for her songs about modern motherhood and relationships. Two singles from the project — The Day Gets Too Long and High Forever — reached No. 1 on the Indigenous Music Countdown, and St. Germain is currently up for seven MCMA nominations, including Female Artist of the Year.

She’s set to perform at the award show on Saturday at Club Regent Event Centre.

“To get that kind of response back is such validation that I am good enough to be in this space and I deserve to be here,” she says. “I don’t think anyone realizes how much it means to me.”

Grandpa Ray — a Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame inductee — may have had some idea.

St. Germain was able to share some of her radio-play success with her grandfather before he died in June.

“I went and visited grandpa and we celebrated and had some cake together at Deer Lodge. That was really special for us to get to do that; it was only a few months before he passed,” she says, adding Grandpa Ray, in addition to leading jam sessions at family gatherings, had a penchant for sneaking his grandkids $20 bills whenever he saw them.

“We always knew he had this huge legacy and was, like, a musical influence, but to us he was just grandpa,” St. Germain says with a catch in her throat. “He never missed an opportunity to tell us how proud he was of us.”

That pride continues to radiate through her extended family.

“I think that a lot of them are kind of like, ‘What took so long?’” St. Germain says, laughing. “They’ve always encouraged me.”

It’s also on full display when fielding music requests from her kids — and Sebastian in particular.

“He constantly wants to play (my songs), which is so sweet,” she says. “Other than my husband, he’s my No. 1 fan for sure.”

The shoes are still big, but St. Germain is finding her footing in the family business, one knee-high cowboy-booted step at a time.

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @evawasney