Candi Staton

Main Stage, Sunday, July 5, 4.45pm

SHE may be on the main stage at a festival apparently dedicated to jazz, but Georgia-based singer Candi Staton admits it is the one genre she has never been able to master.

“I can’t scat and all that stuff,” she says from her home in Madison. “I can do blues and gospel – they’re pretty much the same, just different lyrics. I can do house and disco music, and soul music – whatever you put before me. I love changing genres every once in a while - you can get stuck in a rut if you only do one thing. You don’t put on the same dress every day!”

Staton became an international soul and disco superstar with the hits Young Hearts Run Free and You Got The Love.

But she also enjoys a career as a gospel singer, with 25 years of gospel recordings under her belt. Latest album Life Happens saw her return to the world of secular music though, reuniting with legendary Muscle Shoals producer Rick Hall for the first time in more than 30 years on a handful of tracks.

“Going back to that studio brought back so many memories,” she says. “We’ve both grown older and know how to do things a little better. I used to have to go over and over my songs, singing and singing until he got what he needed. When we recorded I’m Just A Prisoner [in 1969] I felt like a prisoner by the time the song ended – it took three days! I could not get what he wanted. I asked him: ‘What are you looking for?’ and he said: ‘I don’t know, but I’ll know when I find it.’ It was a learning experience for sure!”

Life Happens also sees Staton work with her son, drummer Marcus Williams, on their first secular album together.

“We have done four or five gospel records with him producing,” says Staton. “It wasn’t like we were strangers in the studio, but we hadn’t done that genre of music together. He did an excellent job.”

In terms of style Life Happens reflects Staton’s varied career, hopping between Americana, soft-rock, soul and even bouncy almost discopop on Three Minutes To A Relapse, a song inspired by her last relationship when she discovered her partner was cheating on her.

“It’s better than laying on a psychiatrist’s couch talking about your problems,” she says. “Singing is very therapeutic to me. When something goes down in my life I get on the keyboard upstairs in my bedroom and start singing.”

This feeling stretches to her live shows as well.

“Even if I have sung sad song after sad song when I finish a show I feel better,” she says. “When I sing songs like I’m Just A Prisoner or Evidence I have lived those songs. But when I get it out there the problem is gone. Most of us don’t talk about our problems, we don’t go into ourselves and own what we have done.

“We keep pulling one layer over another – it’s how people get into drugs and alcohol trying to mask that emotion. I can say: ‘I did it, I made a wrong choice, I saw the red flags, I’m sorry and I’m never going to do it again.’”

Expressing her problems out loud is something she did from a very young age.

“When I was living in the country I used to talk to the trees when my mother did something to me and I couldn’t talk to anyone else,” she says. “It’s fine to talk to yourself – just don’t answer back or they’ll put you in a straitjacket!”

As for the future there is more music to come.

The day The Guide spoke to her Staton had just penned a new gospel song inspired by something she had said to a friend after a swimming pool party.

“I called down and said: ‘The door’s open, come on in,” she says. “It’s become a really inspirational song to a friend – whatever you need my door is always open, you can share your problems.”

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