Kylie Harris "Let it be Love" 1995

When Kylie Harris touched down in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1997 she had two New Zealand country music album of the year awards under her belt and a phone number in her pocket.
The onboard sound system was playing ‘How Bizarre’ by OMC and the 22-year-old Harris took it as a sign that her permanent move to the country music capital of the world was a good decision.
And so it was. Within the next decade, she had appeared on the Grand Ole Opry twice, was hosting daily cable television show The Edge Of Country, had released her own self-funded album and was touring the States as part of country music superstar Patty Loveless’s backing band...
...The youngest of Clem and Anita Harris’s four children, Kylie Harris was born in Hamilton on 14 November 1974. The family moved to Edendale, 27km south of Gore, where the children grew up listening to and singing along to their parents’ John Denver, Charley Pride, Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, and Patsy Cline LPs.
When Harris was about 13, a friend of her parents’ suggested the family attend the Lower Mataura Country Music Club where the children could gain experience singing with a band and using microphones. Only Harris and her sister Joanna kept at it.
Kylie began entering the local talent competitions around the bottom of the South Island and, out of necessity, picked up the guitar when the John Denver songs she was choosing to sing proved too obscure for the backing bands.
Her first paying gig was as opening act to John Grenell, one of New Zealand’s biggest country stars, at a fertilising company conference in Wellington. Both acts were flown to Wellington where, unbeknownst to Harris, they were to share a rental car to the gig. For Harris it was like driving with Elvis Presley.
Two years after her first crack at the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards in Gore, Harris won the overall junior/intermediate title there in 1990. Two years later, at the age of 17, she became the youngest-ever overall winner of the NZ Gold Guitar. Part of the prize was the recording of a promotional cassette at the studio of former That’s Country and Ray Columbus & The Invaders guitarist Brian Ringrose.
A big fan of Patsy Riggir, Harris’s mother put together a booklet of photos and newspaper clippings of her daughter’s career and, together with the Ringrose tape, sent it off to the Stebbing Recording Centre in Auckland, where Riggir recorded her albums.
By now based in Putaruru, South Waikato, coincidentally the site of the Riggir family homestead, the Harrises were ecstatic when Eldred Stebbing phoned to set up a meeting. Sitting in the corner office of his Jervois Road empire, the recording industry veteran laid out his plans for Harris and quickly signed her to an album deal.
Produced and arranged by Gary Daverne, Let It Be Love was released on BMG in 1995, complete with TV advertising. It included two songs written by Harris and her brother Greg, as well as covers of Suzy Boggus, Kathy Mattea and Cyndi Lauper and a reworking of New Zealand schoolboy David Curtis’s 1970 hit ‘Wheel Of Fortune’.
The album featured a choir and live strings and seasoned session players such as Billy Kristian on bass, Billy Lang on guitars, Steve Garden on drums and Malcolm McCallum on backing vocals. It went on to win the Tui for New Zealand country music album of the year, but Harris was bewildered to also win the rising star award ahead of pop sensation Bic Runga.
In the mid-90s, Harris toured New Zealand and Australia extensively as support for former Irish Rovers frontman Will Millar and his new band. She was part of Sir Howard Morrison’s 40th anniversary tour alongside Ray Woolf, John Grenell and Gray Bartlett, and opened for US superstars Ricky Skaggs, Charley Pride and Kenny Rogers. There were also a couple of jaunts around New Zealand and Australia in 1995-96 singing Patsy Cline numbers in Grenell’s Jim Reeves tribute show.
When it came time for Harris to record her second album, Fancy, Shania Twain was the hottest property in Nashville. Eldred Stebbing brought in copies of Twain’s first two albums and told Harris to select 10 of the songs to record. She managed to reduce the number to two and celebrated a small victory when she arranged to have the returning Will Millar’s band on the recording, supplemented by Kristian, Lang and Martin Winch, amongst others.
The material was arrived at after some pushing and pulling between Harris, Stebbing and producer Gary Daverne and included just one of her own songs, and another written with her brother. The majority dated from the 1960s and 70s and were hits for Dolly Parton and Crystal Gayle (four each) and Lynn Anderson (two). It didn’t matter, Fancy was awarded New Zealand country music album of 1997...to be continued... - Glen Moffatt & audioculture
trax:
01 Man with a Mission 02 Let It Be Love 03 Home 04 Lost River 05 True Colours 06 Upside of Down 07 There's No Heart so Strong 08 Wheel of Fortune 09 Tell Me Why 10 To Know Him Is to Love Him 11 Handyman's Dream 12 Where've You Been 13 Hand in Hand and Heart to Heart 14 Wayfaring Stranger 15 God's Green Earth
…served by Gaius…