A love for loud

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey
Reader Staff

When Celeste “CC” Spina posted a video of herself drumming in Craigslist’s “Musician’s Wanted” section over a decade ago, it is safe to say that she got more than she bargained for.

Little Hurricane. Courtesy photo.

Spina found the bandmate she sought in guitarist Anthony “Tone” Catalano and, soon after, a partner in life. The two are now married with a family of their own, built upon the band that came out of that Craigslist ad: the dirty blues duo Little Hurricane.

“I often think about what my 10-year-old self would think,” Spina told the Reader. “I think she’d think it was pretty cool.”

Little Hurricane will do what it does best on Thursday, July 14 at Farmin Park in Sandpoint as the band plays the free and family friendly Sandpoint Summer Music Series at 6 p.m. Spina said that each live show is a reminder of how far she and Catalano have come.

“That’s where our love story was formed,” she said of Little Hurricane’s live shows. “So when we’re back on stage, there’s this energy, [this] feeling we have that’s nostalgic but also a really deep connection.”

It would be easy to compare Northern California-based Little Hurricane to The White Stripes and call it a day, but that would sell the duo short. While the band’s image, instrumentation and early music certainly parallels the messy rock of The White Stripes, Little Hurricane has proven itself capable of blending its self-proclaimed “dirty blues” with country, Americana and straight-up pop. At its core, Little Hurricane’s sound is pure, raw chemistry.

“With two people it makes sense to go a little more grimey and loud and trashy,” Spina said.

When the coronavirus pandemic canceled every anticipated show starting in March 2020, Little Hurricane was already in a major transitional period as a band and as a family, having recently welcomed their second child. Spina said it was “really scary” not knowing what would happen next.

“Everything that we thought we would earn for the year was gone,” she said, adding that they hosted private shows over Zoom for a while as a way to get by. “We just got through it in the best way we could.”

Out of that time at home came Little Hurricane’s forthcoming project: Life is but a Dream. The full-length album reimagines children’s nursery rhymes as groovy, rock-heavy tracks, showcasing Spina’s unwavering rhythm and Catalano’s bluesy vocals.

“They sound like Little Hurricane,” she said of the songs on the new album. “We’re singing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ but it’s definitely in our style.”

Those nursery-rhymes-turned-rock-ballads will fit in perfectly to the band’s set at Farmin Park, since the Sandpoint Summer Music Series is meant to entertain all ages. Such a gig dovetails with Little Hurricane’s current ethos.

“Family friendly events are definitely where we want to be right now,” Spina said.

That isn’t to say that Spina didn’t once have dreams of spending each day on a tour bus, selling out major venues and entering what many would consider the next phase as a band. However, she said there’s a certain “peace” in Little Hurricane’s current circumstances: still in the van, but now, with their kiddos coming along for the ride.

“When I’ve seen interviews of bands who have gone on to do the things that I thought I wanted to do, when they talk about the best times of being in their band, it was this phase that we’ve been in for a long time,” she said.

It’s a double life Spina said she “wouldn’t trade for the world.”

“I think we have the best of both worlds, because I can take my kids to preschool, but then on the weekends, go rock out,” she said. “It’s not lost on me that I’m pretty lucky.”

Listen and learn more at littlehurricanemusic.com.