First Light

The Spinning Jenny, Dawn's debut album, is being released in two parts. The first, composed of Celtic and Western inspired songs, informs the theme of her current tour, while the second will be Eastern-influenced work. Band lynchpin Kimberley Dawn Lysons explains that they've split the songs in order to create a story and to let the band theme their tours, but that it's the melding of those influence that lies at the heart of her writing. 

“The theme of east-meets-west really came about from my family's heritage,” she says. “My dad is part east Indian and his family came over from India, into America, and travelled up into Canada. There was a lot of violence in India at the time, it happened during an uprising, so they basically escaped. They met Irish people and Calgary [folk] and first-nations people along the way and basically ended up settling with them. So, the influences that came about during that time have continued on down the line. It's just conjured up so many images and is periodically referenced in my music. And that was what Jeff and I really had a lot of fun drawing inspiration from.”

The Jeff in question is Tea Party frontman Jeff Martin, who has produced The Spinning Jenny. It's an impressive collaboration for a debut album, but from their first introduction Lysons says it's been a meeting of minds.

“A couple of years ago I was asked to support his solo tour in North Queensland. It was the first time I'd met him and we didn't even get through a set: after sound-check he said, 'Can I produce you?' How could I say no to that?” she laughs. “The influences in my music are very similar to the influences in his music. He's travelled to all the countries that make up my family history, and so I think we both felt that it was quite an awesome sort of synergy.

“Originally I was up in North Queensland and he was in Byron and I was sending down all of my demos, all of my vocal compositions, and he listened to them and thought about what he could do and which ones he preferred. And then when I got to Byron, we sat down and almost storyboarded the songs, and had a chat about the vision behind each one. He started out laying down a really spacious soundscape and I would record all of the vocal arrangements. Then he would start layering in the guitar or sitar or esraj – whatever instruments he felt were appropriate – and then we just kept building and building the songs. Even when I supported him for his solo tour at the end of last year, it was so hard not to work on new material. I think both of us just wanted to keep going, but we had to stop at twelve [songs].”

In the live realm Dawn is a seven-piece band, allowing Lysons to not only match the album's complexity, but expand on it. 

“We've gotten away with four- and five-piece arrangements, but I just felt that I didn't want to compromise anything,” she says. “Some of the songs we've tailored a little more to the live environment, made them a little bit bigger, because we've got a lot of instruments to play with. We've probably added more texture to the music.”