Music at the Gazebo: Cathy Richardson

GRAMMY Nominated Rock Goddess Cathy Richardson has been busy. Chicago music fans will remember Richardson from the thousands of local club and festival dates she played with her namesake band from the 90s through the early 2000s when she was cast as Janis Joplin in the Off Broadway show Love, Janis and left her hometown to find her fortunes in New York City.

Richardson followed Love, Janis to San Francisco in 2006 and had lived there less than a year when she met Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship founder, Paul Kantner. Richardson soon became the lead singer for Jefferson Starship and has been fronting the band for over nine years.

“I think there’s a lot of people who think I left the Chicago area and never came back because I’m on the road so much, but I moved back in 2009,” says Richardson from her home in suburban Elmhurst.

When Kantner passed away from complications after a heart attack in January of 2016, the future of the band was uncertain but Richardson cites a “divine intervention” from the original Rock Goddess, herself, Grace Slick, who granted the remaining members license to continue performing as Jefferson Starship.

A couple months later, Richardson received the phone call of a lifetime when Ms. Slick invited her to sing in her place when Jefferson Airplane received their GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award at the inaugural GRAMMY Salute to Legends Concert last April.