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THE TOGESSENTIAL COLLECTION – FRANCIS KLONOWSKI

STAVIA : DEEP WATERS

I’d had an email in July from the HBA [Hospital Broadcasting association]: they had 20 copies of a new CD from someone called Stavia [pronounced as in “have”]. You might imagine I’m always getting free CDs for my programme, but you couldn’t be more wrong – I think there have only been 5 in the 20-plus years that I’ve been presenting the album show, so I can honestly say the stuff I play was pretty well self-purchased.

Not to miss the chance of a rare freebie, I requested a copy. Well, luckily I was within the first 20 because Deep Waters turned out to be a truly lovely CD full of music that would go down so well on Wake Up To Wogan. The album was released in June, receiving its first airing with a live performance on Woman’s Hour. I just hope it moves down the dial to 89.3, because it really deserves exposure on day-time radio. Think of Beverley Craven at her best in her early days – Promise Me, Woman to Woman etc – and you’ll get some idea of the style and quality on offer here. I’ve heard and read other comparisons as well – “reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s best:’; a voice that’s like “a cross between Carly Simon and Eva Cassidy”’ Dido, Judy Tzuke, even Capercaillie have been mentioned. Listening to Terry recently, I realized there could be yet another one – Jewel. But it would be unfair to linger on the comparisons, because Stavia is a fine singer-songwriter in her own right offering serious meditations about life through her songs.

Stavia is also a doctor – just like Terry and Pauly. Well, perhaps not, because this one did bother! [Sorry if you haven’t heard of Paul’s oft-repeated punch-line – I’m not repeating the doctor joke here!] She grew up in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, and was taught to play the piano and guitar by Franciscan nuns. She was then sent to boarding school in England, studied medicine at Oxford, and later trained as a neurologist.

Life took a turn for the worse when Stavia was 20: a car accident killed her mother and left Stavia herself injured. The tragedy was recalled in Listen, the closing track of her previous 2002 album The Way You Are, and reappears here in Nothing So Loud: “So like a whisper in the wind / Fate commanded your farewell / Too faint a message you left”. Following the tragedy, she became engrossed in song-writing, and began recording her own material. After working with a folk-rock band for a while, she began working solely on her own material and released her first solo album in 2000: Forbidden Fruit, Made with the help of Tony Kiley [drummer, Blow Monkeys and Chris de Burgh] and Andy Coughlan [bass player, Gary Numan].

With her distinctive voice and style, South London-based Stavia has come up with a gem of an album. She is also an extremely talented lady: she not only sings the songs but writes them all; she plays piano, keyboards and harmonica; and she co-produced the album. And all this while still practising as a neurologist. The epitome of Fran’s multi-tasking ideal!

The gentle piano introduction of the opening track, Falling, gives you a hint of what is to come: beautiful melodies, thoughtful and moving lyrics, and some powerful backing musicians. This musical style is continued in Break Loose, though this time portraying the anguish of someone “finding it hard to be loyal” in the relationship, “trying so hard to collect myself, so I can break the news to you”.

Relationships figure again in the more up-beat tempo of I Don’t Need You and Just Can’t Help It. While Falling describes the early stages of love, and how it catches you unawares [“Cupid has caught me off my guard”], Broken Hearted moves on the the later realization when “…I see your true colour”. The lies and deceit are sure signs that “like your cigarette the mood of love was all too soon discarded”. The catchy tune of Lucky Day might even be adopted as a TOG’s theme: “Sometimes I think about / when I’m old and grey / skin’s not so silk /my hips have lost their sway / will you still believe it’s your lucky day?” My personal favourite has to be Coming Home, a beautiful song with a gentle piano backing the opening verse before launchinginto the powerful guitar-backed chorus.

Deep Waters is a truly wonderful album, which I can highly recommend for your collection. I’ll leave the last word to Stavia herself:

“I’ve been writing songs on the piano and guitar since my early teens. Most of the songs have a story, inspired by things I’ve experienced either directly or vicariously through people that I’ve known. I’ve been lucky – and unlucky – enough to have had, so far, a life full of extremes, which I guess has contributed to the way I write and sing. Regardless of what happens to the music commercially, I know I will always write songs – it’s taken me long enough to get to the stage of recording them, so I don’t suppose I will stop now”.

Buying it: Best through Stavia’s own website at www.stavia.co.uk, where there’s also a special deal for buying all three of her albums.

FRANCIS KLONOWSKI