Workaholics Anonymous Profile: Cassendre Xavier

By Sherella Gibbs

Cassendre Xavier hasn’t waited to be signed with a major record label to make and sell records. She has not waited to be booked at a major venue to give concerts. She just keeps working.

In fact, just three months shy of a year ago, Xavier concluded her first concert tour. Its centerpiece was an “underground” performance at Suburban Station. It was aptly named The Subway Siren Suburban Station Tour. Since 2001, she has produced four CD’s, created and hosted four radio shows on Radio Volta and WPEB 88.1 FM. She has also been featured on Tiffany Bacon’s Inner City Blues on Power 99FM. She’s done all this without getting an official nod from a major recording mogul.

Xavier jokes about getting started. “Misery and depression” suffered at her day jobs, she says, catalyzed her pursuit of full-time recording artistry. She realized it was time for a vocational change during her last job as a nanny. “I remember I was walking around with the baby and I was feeling so miserable, and I was telling God, ‘Please let me leave this job’.” She was soon fired – on purpose, she admits. “I just didn’t know how to say, ‘Take this job and shove it.” She eventually decided that if she could help it, she’d never have another day job again.

“I saw [getting fired] as an opportunity to try all the things I wanted to try,” Xavier explains. She also worked as a messenger, an artist’s model and as a psychic. Creating The Women’s Writing and Spoken Word Series at Robin’s Bookstore was the crossing of a Rubicon. Her last job a memory, she realized she had the opportunity to do whatever she wanted. “I thought to myself, I want a women’s writing and spoken word series…So, I did it.” With the support of Larry Robin who owns the bookstore, Xavier has been able to create what she describes as a “nurturing environment that celebrates women in the craft of multi-genre writing.” November will mark the series’ second anniversary, which also regularly ends with a co-ed open mic. Poets and fiction writers, several singer-songwriters, a pediatrician, and a cellist are among the many participants who share their writing every first and third Monday at 7pm.

Soon after, Xavier began singing. “I played at cafes, bars…That’s when I started to hone my craft as a singer-songwriter,” says Xavier. Between 2002 and 2003, while interning at WPEB and Radio Volta.org, she created and hosted four radio shows, whose titles connote the artist’s topical and satirical interests. The resurrections of SheZone: Women’s Music & Culture, The Cassendre Xavier Show: Irreverent Talk and Reality Radio and Open Diary: The Making of a Woman/Artist, are planned for Xavier’s internet radio station at www.cassendrexavier.com.

“There’s never been a doubt that music is what I should be doing,” she says. Her passion for music has its metaphysical explanations. “Basically, I’ve been getting all these signlas from the universe to really focus more on music,” she professes. Xavier is now seeking to be signed as a fulltime singer/songwriter. In her Me! Me! Me! Newsletter, she tells readers about her plan to become signed to a major record label. “Stay focused spiritually and artistically,” she writes. “Keep focusing on giving love and giving thanks…Keep remembering who I do this for…You.”

Xavier’s first album, The Whittenberg Sessions, was produced in 2002 with musical composer, Rodney Whittenberg, who, since his collaboration with Xavier has won an Emmy and was nominated for a Grammy. Soon to follow were, Live at Café Improv (2002) and 4our: A Cassendre Xavier Sampler (2004). Her most recent recording, Beautiful, was recorded in 21 hours, while she was uncomfortably perched in a sweltering bathroom with her brother, producer Jee eye zee. “It just happened,” Xavier said. “We were going to just lay down a couple of tracks…Very few songs had more than one take… So we just kept going.”

Beautiful however is no rush-job. It is a prime example of the artist’s lyrical dexterity. Xavier says that part of her inspiration for creating this CD was the fact that she hadn’t put out anything new recently.

On her latest album, Xavier showcases her ability to use her voice as an instrument. With the intensity of her emotion in the vocal arrangement, she owns Bog’s Song, a tale about a heartbroken guitar player, matching the searing ardor of Sarah McLachlan emotionally prossessing Adia. Xavier accompanies her voice with the simplicity of her acoustic guitar-playing, creating a polyrhythmic kinship with the instrument.

This year, Xavier will be releasing a new CD. She promises a new sound, different from her past, acoustic, soulful-folk style. She and Jee eye zee will collaborate on the work, weaving hip hop modulations into the product. Jee eye zee will top off a resume listing his teaming with Wyclef Jean, All Saints and C Knowledge of the Diggable Planets. “I think this might be my next masterpiece,” Xavier explains. “[We] understand each other musically. He’s incredibly intuitive and has a great ear.”

To read more about Xavier, visit www.cassendrexavier.com