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PICKING HER TIME
Susan Jarvis
SARAH KAY has been playing music for as long as she can remember.
The daughter of award-winning country musician and songwriter GARRY KOEHLER, from THE BOBKATZ, she can’t remember a time when she wasn’t singing along or playing an instrument.
As soon as she left school, she hit the stage with a succession of bands, performing pretty much every style of music, and loving every minute.
Now, more than a decade later, she’s finally released her debut album, Dawn Of A New Day.
The obvious question is why it took her so long. It certainly wasn’t a shortage of talent - Sarah has that in spades.
“I guess I knew I wasn’t prepared back then. At 19, all you want to do is party. And I’d been around the music business long enough to realize that if you’re going to record an album, you have to be willing to do all the other stuff it takes to make it happen for you,” Sarah said.
“Now, at 29, I’m focused and confident enough to tackle that - and I guess I’ve lived enough to have something real to say in my songs.”
Dawn Of A New Day was certainly worth the wait. It’s a classy, perceptive and highly appealing album expertly produced by MICHAEL FLANDERS.
Launched during the Tamworth Festival, Dawn Of A New Day certainly has country music fans talking about Sarah’s music, as well as her edgy, passionate delivery.
“I’m really excited about this album. It has a lot of me in it - in fact, it’s pretty revealing,” Sarah said.
“But I like the fact that my songs have real emotions and real experiences in them. What you hear on the album - that’s just who I am.”
Sarah went to Nashville for an extended stay to write material for the album, and came up with a batch of songs that captured many aspects of her life and personality. She co-wrote seven of the album’s 12 tracks.
“Even the songs I didn’t write were chosen because they touched a chord with me. They said something about the way I see the world,” Sarah said.
The album’s title track, Dawn Of A New Da” was written on her very first day in Nashville.
“For me, this album really does represent a new start, a new phase of my life, after a divorce and learning to be a single mum. It’s a song about the trauma of leaving one part of your life, but there’s a lot of hope about the future in it. And I’m certainly feeling that hope right now,” she said.
That sense of hope is also evident in Pocket Full of Stardust, which captures Sarah’s vision of the world perfectly. She has a couple of tattoos of fairies, and believes that magic will follow if you just have the right attitude.
The love songs on Dawn Of A New Day are all a little different, as is all of Sarah’s music. One of the most memorable is languid, mesmerising Beautiful Dream.
The gentle For You and What Love Feels Like are also beautifully crafted songs sung with sensitivity and style.
Sarah has a slightly husky, emotional and quite compelling voice that’s perfect for conveying all the nuances of emotion, and she uses it to extremely good effect.
One of the standout tracks is the first single, Feel the Rain, a big, powerful song that was the perfect vehicle to launch Sarah’s country career.
Other tracks well worth a listen are On the Line and Work in Progress, which explore points in life when decisions need to be made, and the bluesy Little Miss Sunshine.
Sarah’s father co-write the touching Doll House, based on a true story, and women everywhere will relate to Beautiful Lies.
Sarah Kay is refreshingly different, delightfully real, and very talented. Dawn of a New Day is sure to hit the mark with country fans everywhere, and to garner Sarah plenty of attention as 2010 unfolds.
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