Lucky One by Miriam Clancy

If Miriam Clancy’s name is new to you then you aren’t alone. Born in Auckland, from age six she grew up in Foxton well away from the music hubs of the country, and while she’s been singing for well over a decade it was always in someone else’s band. But this is her time and she knows it.

"It’s like I’ve been hiding under a rock until now," she admits.

Clancy comes from a musical background -- her Croatian mother and Irish father both played in bands -- and artists like Little Feat and Neil Young (along with Irish music) were the soundtrack to her childhood.

With a laugh she’ll admit she wrote her first song at age six ("It was about my teddy bear!") but she always knew her life would be in music. "When I was about six or seven I wrote a journal and had pictures of myself with a microphone. I knew what I was going to do, which is exactly what I am doing now. "But I knew it then and would go to sleep thinking about it."

She studied classical piano but her musical tastes were shaped by the melodic pop of Fleetwood Mac and David Bowie, and the angular funk of Prince in the 80s, and at 13 she discovered reggae.

At 16 she left school and after a few months in a lousy job hooked up with local musicians and started on the pub circuit singing AC/DC and Pat Benatar covers.

Since then she has come a long way: doing corporate gigs around Foxton and Levin; working with jazz musicians in Wellington; in Auckland clubs and on a trip to Malaysia with Ted Clarke’s Backdoor Blues Band; and singing in various bands (the Rockafellas, the Lyn Buchanan Band, with Del Piranha and the Rhythm Kings).

She gained considerable studio experience doing backing vocals for other artists, but five years ago pulled back from constant gigging to work on songwriting. With a bracket of strong original material she then started performing in intimate venues around Auckland while honing her songwriting.

A trip to Los Angeles with a demo tape was so inspiring she started playing in singer-songwriter nights there and found that she was upping her game even more. "That atmosphere really fired me up," she says while also acknowledging the influence of Johnny Cash on her recent work.

She returned home from Los Angeles as a seasoned performer with a swag of new songs which became Lucky One.

If intelligent singer-songwriters and Americana alt.country artists just off the edge of the mainstream appeal to you, then you’ll need no further invitation to listen up to Miriam Clancy.

She has stories to tell and a passionate voice full of emotional honesty.

It has been a long journey, but Miriam Clancy has arrived."

Graham Reid - www.elsewhere.co.nz

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