by GERARD DEE

Listening to 24-year-old Georgia native Lizz Wright's debut disc Salt is like tasting a piece of spicy fried chicken - zesty, juicy and ultimately satisfying. A seamless blend of covers and original material, Salt is a deeply soulful mixture of gospel, folk and blues over a solid jazz foundation. Wright's powerful vocals are the final ingredient in this engaging brew. The Mirror caught up with Wright in her Brooklyn digs.

Mirror: When did you start singing?

Lizz Wright: It's something that I've been doing for as long as I remember. If my mom tells you the story, I was probably singing before I was speaking clearly.

M: Who are your musical influences?

LW: Dad made sure that I could play piano a little bit and he literally drafted me into singing in church. I would definitely say he is one of my major influences in that way. I was listening to gospel until I was about 18. My influences were like, the whole Winnans family, the Hawkins family and Oleta Adams. I really love Oleta.

M: When did you get into jazz?

LW: I started listening to a lot of jazz as I got older, and I was really attracted by Nina Simone and Abby Lincoln. I grew up singing gospel and I really liked gospel music a lot. I liked it because it brought people together and I liked people's openness during gospel performances. I really appreciated the sacredness of gospel - I just wanted to sing about more things. Jazz was perfect, it has that sacredness and that sense of reverence in how you talk about it.

M: Tell me about creating this album - what kind of process was that for you?

LW: Honestly, at times it was extremely difficult. And the hardest part was me when I was alone, trying to figure out what I'm doing, what genre do I fit in. When I was thinking like that, I was going crazy. I really had to learn to slow down and take it song for song and really learn to trust people. I had to do it very quickly and growing fast like that can actually be painful and tumultuous.

M: Would you call yourself a jazz singer?

LW: I'm just a singer and I really appreciate jazz. I feel safer saying that I'm paying tribute to it in my own way, rather than say I'm singing it. It's very funny, I left the church so that I could be more free, but now that I'm in jazz it sometimes reminds me of the church and gospel - new rules and definitions and people disagreeing on what is what. But jazz liberated me and so I want to keep my musical influence that way.

M: You've said that music is like dreaming. What did you mean by that?

LW: When we dream, it's like our only chance to be something else besides human. We organize things in our sleep. We search out the meaning of things in our sleep. We can see all the things we've been collecting in our subconscious. And to write music is almost to dream awake. It's to show people how beautiful their lives are. When you make music that touches people, it's like you've let them into your dreams.

At Club Soda on Saturday, July 5, 7pm, $24.50

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