Sarah Brown bares her soul

Sarah Brown chose to release her self-titled debut album independently.

A few weeks ago Sarah Brown played a delicate support set for Greg Johnson at the Carlton Ballroom. She wore a floaty, white, baby-doll dress. She was sweet and demure. And she had such a good, loud time living it up afterwards, she prompted a furious concert-goer to turn and hiss, "SHUT UP!"

"To talk to I'm very 'la-dee-da', friendly and chatty," she agrees over a coffee. "But my songs go a lot deeper. When it comes to performing, I'm a bit shy and a little bit nervous, and I haven't quite grasped that I can talk to the audience like I'm talking to you right now."

Even usually hard-headed rock musos are softening to Brown. Her self-titled debut album features Michael Franklin-Browne and Mike Hall of Pluto, Mikey Carpinter of Autozamm and ex-goodshirt brothers Rodney and Murray Fisher, who produced it. The latter three are also in her band.

"It's quite different for them because they're such rock'n'roll, greasy-haired, leather jacket-wearing boys," giggles Brown, "but they play my music beautifully."

So will the real Sarah Brown please stand up? In her music video she's a marionette but in real life there's no record company pulling strings. Her voice has a sultry, you-can't-touch-me attitude, but in person she's so bubbly it's impossible not to warm to her.

Or yell at her, it seems.

All of which is news to Brown, who is only just getting used to hearing what other people think of her music. During a recent trip to New Zealand, music industry legend Seymour Stein (who launched the careers of Madonna and the Ramones), said of her, "That girl's got something goin' on!"

Yet when her manager, Grant Hislop, first approached the Fisher brothers to see if they'd be interested in featuring on Brown's album, "they were like, nah, it's not our thing". Rodney changed his mind after getting to know Brown through her regular gig at Match Bar.

They recorded her first single, Hands, which is now getting substantial airplay on the music channels. The video, directed by Kezia Barnett, is up for a Kodak Gong Award.

As for radio-play, Brown's sound veers on the adult contemporary side of pop so that hasn't been easy so far.

But after the support gigs for Johnson, and a successful launch party in her hometown of Blenheim, Brown plans to celebrate by headlining her first gig at the Classic. It will be a suitably intimate, cabaret set-up, with candlelit tables, as Brown conjures the torch singer within.

"I think often my songs are extremely soul-baring," she says.

Her seductive, smoky voice is testament to her old-fashioned heroes, such as Dusty Springfield, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, with the youthful tone of Katie Melua. The Mariah Carey phase, she says, is well and truly over.

"I tried to do the whole big voice, all-over-the-place kind of thing which really didn't work for me."

Brown has singing in her blood. Her grandmother still sings in a choir, at the age of 81, and her mother, also a singer, encouraged her daughter from an early age. By age three Brown had already made her stage debut, performing at a charity dinner.

"Nana would get me round the piano and she'd try and see how high I could sing. Mum was always teaching me songs and ordering backing tapes. I was always singing anywhere. It was just something that I always did."

As a teenager she picked up the guitar, went to performing arts school and started playing in bars, heading straight home after her sets because she was under-age.

Her first big break was winning in the Ovation Rockshop songwriting competition.

"I had this crappy little guitar I'd bought myself and then I won this amazing, beautiful, $4500 guitar. It was quite country and western, a man's guitar. Everywhere I went boys would be like, 'Whoa'."

It was her performance at the York Street Studio's Acid Test competition that caught the attention of Hislop, then manager of goodshirt and Pluto. They worked together for a few years, trying different producers, bands and studios but the time to record an album wasn't right. Hislop also took her to two record labels in the hope of getting her signed.

"We decided the best option would be to go independent so we didn't pursue that route. It's been worth it because I'm so happy with the result."

* Sarah Brown, Friday, August 25, the Classic Comedy Club and Bar, Auckland, Tickets, $25 per person, table seating, from Ticketek