FAR FROM HOME

Singer Tammy Weis turned her back on a promising singing career in her native Canada to make it on the London scene. It could turn out to have been a good move, says Selwyn Harris of Jazzwise Magazine

   Every once in a while a singer comes along who's able to recharge the batteries of an over-familiar standard or illuminate an otherwise derivative new song. The Candian-born Tammy Weis is such a singer. I'm speaking to her in the cavernous, swish interior of Quaglino's restaurant in Piccadilly where Weis is about to play a set alongside a top-notch quartet of drummer Paul Clarvis, bassist Arnie Somogyi and pianist Tim Lapthorn. It's a far cry from the folksy small town in northern Alberta, Canada in which Weis was brought up, but an ambience perfectly tuned to her elegant yet emotionally edged poise in front of a mic. Later on she demonstrates an incredible ease with the subtle nuances of jazz vocal improvisation channeled through a wide selection of material from an American songbook that contains country, R&B, doo-wop and pop classics as well as standards.

   "I was first influenced by jazz about eight or nine years ago when I heard a version of Sarah Vaughan singing 'Over the Rainbow'," she says to me before the gig. "I had grown up with country music, rock and pop in a small town, so jazz was a really big thing with me. At that point I really started researching and listening and becuase Sarah Vaughan's voice was so incredible I thought, 'wait a minute, I want to do that'!" Up to that point, Weis' background had been primarily shaped by pop and rock music, by her mother's love of country music (She was named Tammy after her mum's favourite singer), and summertime folk hoedowns with her banjo and fiddle-playing great-grandfather at her grandmother's farm in Canada. But she tells me how she more or less gave up thinking about singing as a vocation in her twenties and settled into a "normal" career in sales and marketing. It was her mum's sudden death from a heart attack in 1994 that turned her priorities around.

   "When my mum passed away it was like, 'life is too short, what do you really want to do?'" she says. "My mum was a country singer and she had been singing for almost a decade so I'd seen what that meant to her, it was always something she wanted to do. It was also something that I always wanted to do but, again you get so influenced by society and material things and what you think you should be doing. So when you have a tragedy like that it's 'well wait a minute, what is it I really want to do'?"

   Going through her mum's possessions at the time of her death, she discovered a handwritten songbook of all the songs her mum liked to sing. Weis decided to do the album her mother would have liked to record, while giving everything a jazz treatment. The songs that range from Everly Brothers, Carpenters and Ray Charles through to Gershwin became her debut album Legacy (later issued in the UK on 33 Records), recorded in Vancouver with Canadian jazz musicians.

   "What I like about jazz is the innocence and the vulnerability," she says. "It's similar to country in a way: there is that heartache and association that allows you to go deep and express yourself that maybe you wouldn't in a pop scenario. It's very intimate, and I love the fact that every song that you do can be done differently every time you do it and it depends on yours and the band's feeling and emotion at that particular time".

   The album proved a hit in Canada, with national media attention, no shortage of good gigs and major Canadian jazz festival appearances, but she, perhaps surprisingly, upped sticks to settle in London. "I just wanted to be challenged more," she says. "I love Vancouver and Canada but it is quite a small market and it's different coming to London where there's so many things going on. I've grown so much as a human being, as a songwriter and an artist so sometimes you can get too comfortable being at home, and in your surroundings and it's more difficult to challenge yourself on a regular basis."

   Alongside Weis' ability as a vocalist comes an uninhibited confidence, (perhaps partly acquired from her days in sales and marketing) so it didn't take long for her to get in amongst the action in London. Besides guest apperances on tour with Jamie Cullum and Ray Gelato, her regular bands have included musicians such as drummers Ralph Salmins, Clark Tracey, and pianist Gareth Williams. But Weis' desire to be challenged is perhaps demonstrated in her recent dates with the enigmatic UK saxophonist Steve Williamson, who has previously hooked up with the likes of Cassandra Wilson and Abbey Lincoln. She says: "We did 'Everytime We Say Goodbye' at the 606 on Valentine's and we did a little duet. What we want to do is harmonise with each other and really do something a little different where we're almost talking back at each other. We're going to do more of that." She met Williamson while rehearsing for a new jazz opera called Bridgetower by pianist Julian Joseph who has been championing Weis of late. Currently in rehearsals the opera will premiere at the City of London Festival in July.

   Lately she has also entered a writing collaboration with the pianist Tom Cawley and recorded demos in preparation for a future release. The songs have more of a Norah Jones-like homespun charm than Legacy, recalling songwriters such as early period Tom Waits, Randy Newman and Stevie Wonder. In the end Weis doesn't feel the choice of material compromises her jazz sensibilities at all. She says: "I want to honour jazz - there's that fine line between doing that and being yourself, communicating what you need to communicate."

Find out more about Tammy Weis on her website
www.tammyweis.com