Kathy Sparling, whose debut album As You Believed was released in 2010, writes songs that cover deeply personal territory yet strike equally deep chords of recognition in her listeners.
"As long as I’ve been writing songs, people have been responding to them with strong emotion, and often tears," Kathy notes; these tears are testament both to the frequent heartbreak of the songs' themes and to the honesty and vulnerability of their delivery. As in life, the songs' heartbreak is always tempered with humor and hopefulness: the silly and the serious are ultimately wedded in modern marriage, the loss of childhood is both poignant and full of brave promise, and sunlight illuminates even the dreariest corners of domestic life.
Kathy’s voice is often described as sweet and refreshingly unmannered. This not entirely modern character has served her well for her work as chanteuse, ukulelist, and resident "It Girl" with Dodge’s Sundodgers, a San Francisco Bay Area-based string band led by Al Dodge, a founding member of R. Crumb's Cheap Suit Serenaders. The Sundodgers play songs of the 1920s and 30s; "certainly, being steeped in the works of the great songwriters of that era has not hurt my own songwriting," says Kathy. On the fourteen songs comprising As You Believed, Kathy’s voice, ukulele, and tenor guitar are joined by numerous Bay Area musicians including bassist and ukulele player Steven Strauss, pianist Charlie Hancock, drummers John Hanes and Federico Gil Sola, guitarists Kurt Stevenson, Steve Kirk, Dennis Finnegan and Tim Fox, violinist Julian Smedley, and percussionist Bobby Santos -- and the effect is entirely of our time. The album was arranged and produced by Steven Strauss, an artist well-known to Bay Area music lovers for his multi-genre-spanning and virtuosic bass and ukulele work.
By day, Kathy is a professional librarian who facilitates an uneasy peace between the computers and the books, but covertly sells arms to the books.
Further biographical details are available from close attention to the following songs, whose lyrics are available on the Music page:
A Little Family Background
As You Believed, Get Well Soon
Intimate Relationships, Past and Present
Exult, Love Song, Embroidery, The Moon Is Coming With Us
Domestic Bliss, Motherhood, etc.
Not a Lullaby, The Violin Song, Housework, Chapter Book, The Ones That Got Away
Miscellaneous Concerns
Just Your Eyes, Voyager