Kate Feeny: piano, vocals;
Deanne Iovan: drums, vocals
Influences
Lou Reed, Josephine Baker, Debussy, Leonard Cohen, Leonard Bernstein, Serge Gainsbourg, Burt Bacharach, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, Jeff Lynne, 1920s Cabaret, Cole Porter, the Moon.
Sunshine Doray’s debut album can leave you giggling at home about subject matter you would never dare laugh about in public. The eponymous record by Sunshine Doray can just as easily turn on the waterworks. And, depending on your penchant for tongue-in-cheek metaphors and true-to-life-fables, you could do both within the same song. Singer and songwriter Kate Feeny has laid out her unconventional life stories into unconventional pop songs that echo a bygone era. With drummer Deanne Iovan (The Come Ons), Sunshine Doray has made an album that is impossible to categorize. Can you think of a genre that describes a record that sounds like cabaret, jazz, noir polkas, infectious and classic piano pop songs? Originally, Sunshine Doray, a reference to a minor character from the film Harold and Maude, originally represented a sort of delusional, narcissistic alter ego for Feeny. At least we hope it was an alter ego.
With Sunshine Doray, Feeny’s intimate tunes come from both a personally haunted and gratified study of self exploration. “Introspection and self analysis are actually a luxury,” says Feeny, now a mother of two. “Often painful, surely, but something one can indulge in only if one has some free time and space to do so.” Imagine if you put Regina Spektor in a time machine, sent her to a bittersweet and beautiful universe in which she and a young Harry Nilsson listened to a lot of Tom Waits and wrote songs to play together on piano in a Polish bar. Their songs would sound like fictional stories and about storybook characters; but in truth are built on the songwriter's real experiences. Places where a cabaret piano romp mixes in with a torch song for a lost lover and a song about people dying makes you laugh. They are eccentric without being “quirky.” The sound of the past messed up in today’s world of lovers, lepers and lonely old people.
Great to meet you last night. GREAT show! I really, REALLY enjoyed your set. We'll have to do it again. My husband was singing your tunes the whole ride home.
I was just a little bummed the cat wasn't part of the show (the one on your drummer's dress in the poster). Could you work that out for next time?? :)
Hey-I lost the job with that darned ring tone company and can no longer vouch for them- just use one of the ring tones that comes with the phone---- sorry!!!!
I really do need those lessons. I am deplorable at piano. My mother brought home our neighbor's out of tune piano, and it needs loving fingers to play it, and I cannot help.
XXX
kat
The Debut Album - SOUND is now available through iTunes worldwide.
(As heard on Mark Radcliffe and seen in the press from Q right through to Nuts-mag!)
* BRILLIANT! You won't be disappointed!!!! (Jax from Stafford, UK).
* worth every eurcent, enjoying every second. (Sexy Groovy Rhythms from Italy).
* I've the distinct pleasure of being the first American to get the CD, completely brilliant! (Baumer from Seattle, US).
Click to check out what the buzz is all about - Cheers!
(please feel free to delete - thanks)
On such a cold day where schools across Northern Ohio are closed, I enjoyed very much, listening your music as I watched my mother shovel the drive!
XXX
Kat
