Sometimes our most fortuitous moments are a combination of timing, yearning and happenstance. Such is the case for fledgling singer/songwriter Kelly Waters. With a degree in acting under her belt, the stage and performing on it were actually old hat for Kelly. It was, in fact, her time off stage that began prepping her for another one.
[youtube 6SyRxPxcrVc]“I was on tour as an actress but I’ve always loved to sing,” Kelly said. “I was doing this tour of Britain as part of a play and I had a lot of free time. I was on stage for about an hour a night and the rest of the time I was just with me. So I remember I bought a really cheap guitar and started teaching myself how to play and that’s really how that all started. What I really wanted to do was accompany myself singing so I started out covering more Country/Folky songs that I knew.”
Not long after, the idea of performing in her new vein supplanted her desire to act and she plunged headlong into her musical pursuit. Around that time, she saw Jason Mraz and she began following his act. “I saw Tracy Chapman in concert and Jason Mraz was opening for her,” she said. “I was really blown away by his live performance so I started following him. Then I saw him at this great venue in London and it was a few days before my first live date. I got to meet him and I spoke to him about my upcoming show and he gave me some advice about the show.”
[youtube Rg3mt10PAdc]Around that time, Kelly met a manager in London and the chance meeting inspired the young artist not just musically; but with an “across the pond” relocation. “I met a woman in London who was managing N’Dea Davenport (Brand New Heavies) and she lived in New York and I had recorded this one CD,” Kelly said. “So after she heard it she said: ‘come over, we can do some recording.’ So I came over and ended up loving it. So I signed a management contract with her and I moved here and the rest is history.”
“It was great and I loved it but obviously it was hard at first,” she said of the relocation. “It took awhile finding my feet, finding a job and figuring out how to live in New York. I lived in London for 10 years but obviously New York is quite different. But I’ve met great people and I’ve gotten to perform in really great places… I love that I got exhausted by it and that it threw me and it’s been a great challenge but I love living here and experiencing it, I feel like I’ve been here forever.”
‘High & Dry’ EP:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/kelly-waters/id264735035?uo=4
Creative juices started flowing after the move and Kelly revisited songs that would lead to the release of her first EP, High and Dry. “I started working on some of these songs a really long time ago,” she said. “And I’ve been trying to find my feet with them for quite some time and I was unsuccessful with that for quite some time. I think I was trying to write the music into something that it wasn’t.” Then she started working with producer Glen Chapman and together they took the songs in their destined direction. “It’s difficult to say I really came up with a concept for the album, because that’s not what happened. It was just a culmination of songs that I managed to find a soft thread that worked for each song.”
Kelly admits that this particular collection of songs are “very emotional and from the heart” so she is focused on the album single, “Sunny” an upbeat, radio-friendly pop track that is the most far removed from the others. The track opens to acoustic strums, slight backing percussion and a whistled intro. Her vocal delivery eventually bounds to the forefront and as the song plays out it does so with a plucky, upbeat vibe. The slight backing instrumentation allows the vocal delivery and light and airy lyrical matter to shine through. The track could easily find itself in standard rotations on any myriad pop radio channels.
High and Dry is available through Soundcloud and iTunes and for more information, news and shows for Kelly see her website at http://kellywatersmusic.com.
By: Christopher West – cwestlaz@gmail.com
