Sia recommendation and fan-funding album success shows the love for Katie Noonan

WHEN Sia recommends your music and hundreds of fans volunteer to pay for your new EP, there must be something special about Katie Noonan.

SIA said it best when she posted her thoughts on Katie Noonan’s new single Peace Is My Drug.

“My friend Katie sure can sing!” Sia said in a post directing her millions of fans to Noonan’s Soundcloud page.

There has never been any doubting the magic that is Noonan’s voice. Since first revealing it as the frontwoman of george 20 years ago, the preternaturally gifted singer and songwriter has been celebrated as one of Australia’s cultural treasures.

Noonan’s fans demonstrated their faith in her prodigious talent when her Pledge campaign to record her sixth solo record was oversubscribed in two days.

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The Peace Is My Drug EP was unlocked by the fan subscription.

Most independent artists wrestle with the financial constraints of funding their recording and associated costs.

Even the tightest shoestring budget still has to factor in thousands for studio time, technicians and musicians.

But they really wrestle with the idea of crowd-funding a record, its promotion or a tour.

As Noonan says, the fans already support her career by buying her records or concert tickets.

She consulted her other good friend Kate Miller-Heidke, who enjoyed an equally successful campaign to raise the budget for her acclaimed independent record O Vertigo!

“I was in the studio when we launched the campaign and freaked out when we found out the result. It was beautiful, just beautiful, a real sense of validation that swept away all those other scary feelings everyone has about doing these things,” she says.

“I’m taking a punt they are going to like this record.”

Like her fellow fundraisers, Noonan had to come up with inducements for her fans, from a copy of the upcoming CD ($20) and Happy Birthday message ($100) through to singing on the album ($600) or a private concert in your home ($5000).

Other fans chose to be a fly on the wall during recording sessions for $250.

Meeting these people who have not only invested in her new record but mostly been lifelong fans has been a bonus to the whole experience.

She has only one of the “At Home” concerts left in the campaign and said she can’t wait to perform these shows later this year.

“Most of them are very, very special events in these people’s lives,” she says.

“I think about four of them are gay commitment ceremonies; I met two of the boys at my Canberra gig last weekend and I am so honoured these people want me to be a part of that.

“Another guy has bought a house concert for his proposal, another for his 50th.”

Peace Is My Drug, whose lyrics are drawn from a Michael Leunig poem, signals yet another sonic shift from this chameleon of an artist.

Noonan can claim any genre and make it her own from classical pieces to dance music.

Her minimalist new single suggests another left turn, this one inspired by her desire to work with a band again, her first project of this nature since The Emperor’s Box album with The Captains in 2010.

“I was madly working on quite difficult classical music for a Sydney Dance Company show and for a break, I went to the keyboard just came out in as much as time as the song is,” she explains.

“I didn’t know if it would be for my other band Elixir or something else but when I did a gig at the Granite Town festival in Moruya last year and I asked Declan Kelly, who plays with me in The Captains and Phil Stack from Thirsty Merc if they would come up and play with me.

“I realised then how much I missed playing with a band.”

My friend katie sure can sing! https://t.co/noc0DzRUCY

— sia (@Sia) February 11, 2015

Noonan promises the songs on her new record, which is due in late July, are the most personal in her long career.

She said age and experience has made her less inclined to hide behind her lyrics.

“It has been a pretty tough few years for me and my girlfriends, a very tumultuous, emotional time. Fortunately, everyone has come through the other side now,” she says.

“I think we’ve all suffered a fair amount of anxiety. For some, it was about divorce, others it was facing the fact they may not become mothers or the joy of becoming a mother at a late stage of life, all sorts of things.”

Katie Noonan, Peace Is My Drug tour, The Toff in Town, Melbourne, March 12; Garden of Unearthly Delights, Adelaide, March 14; Lizottes, Dee Why, March 18, Newtown Social Club, March 19, Heritage Hotel, Bulli, March 20, Brass Monkey, Cronulla, March 21, Lizottes, Newcastle, March 22, The Triffid, Brisbane, March 28

Originally published as Sia recommendation and fan-funding album success shows the love for Katie Noonan