With the release of her debut album “My Denial,” San Francisco-based artist Nya Jade is taking the music world by storm as her music is already garnering the kind of attention common to a no-nonsense female troubadour.
“My Denial” acts like an iPod shuffle in the sense that every song reflects Jade's penchant for the glorious rock sounds of U2 on her song “Molasses,” the social consciousness of a Natalie Merchant on “One Pill,” or the soulful acoustic love song of a Sarah McLachlan on “Next to You.”
“I didn't want to put out a record where every song reminds someone of the last song,” said Jade. “People want a variety, so I thought of what would be cool to put in your car for a road trip from San Francisco to L.A., and not get bored.”
Born in Ghana, Jade (her first name “Nya” means “purposeful” in Swahili and “illustrious” in Gaelic), grew up partly in the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and Canada as her father traveled the world as a doctor with UNAIDS - a joint United Nations program on HIV/AIDS.
Jade attended Stanford University and was soon following in the steps of her father by majoring in pre-medicine. She also auditioned and was accepted into arguably the most elite of Stanford's nine a capella groups, Talisman, which participated in competitions and performed at the 1996 Olympic Games.
Two years later, Jade, now 28, left the group in order to devote all of her time to the academic demands of a pre-med student. During the winter of her junior year, while crossing the street, Jade was hit by a car on the university campus. Her head hit the windshield and she landed on her shoulder. Only 20 at the time, Jade suffered several injuries including a dislocated shoulder. While taking a semester off for physical therapy, Jade turned to the guitar for comfort in the healing process and soon her priorities began to shift.
“It was one of those here today, gone tomorrow moments where I was like, ‘What do you really want to do? What you are passionate about?' I am really passionate about the concept of feeling and realized that medicine wasn't the way to go,” said Jade. “I flirted with the idea of really following music and then decided to go for it.”
Jade then changed her major to economics, earned a bachelor's degree from the Palo Alto-based school and stuck around to earn a master's degree in sociology. Throughout her academic career, Jade played at Stanford's coffeehouse and at cafés in San Francisco. Even with positive support and feedback, Jade still felt the life of a musician was a path to follow in her spare time, and after graduation, took a job with a start-up company in the Silicon Valley. Bored beyond belief, Jade soon put a band together by way of the Craig's List Web site and recorded some demo songs, some of which caught airplay on a local radio station. Jade was soon sharing the stage with the Donnas, Evanescence, Ben Kweller and Maroon 5, and impressed an audience during her side-stage performance at the Dave Matthews Band's Sacramento show.
Jade is very proficient at putting a musical mood to the lyrics; the latter comes to her first, and then she goes back and forth with creating the kind of mood she wants to put to a song. She talked about recording the song “Next to You.”
“It was a challenge because it was more intimate, it was one of those things that I kept going back to, wondering if it was right because when it's that bare, it's definitely just raw emotion. I did it this way because I felt it was the purest love song I had,” she said.
When it came time to record “My Denial,” Jade traveled to Los Angeles to record in the Westlake Audio studios with a group of session players like bassist Dan Rothchild, guitarist Rick Dufay and drummer Dan Potruch. “My Denial” was released this summer on her own label, Katako Records, Katako is derived from the initials of Jade's family members. The new single “One Pill” opens the record.
“I was up late watching some television show and I swear within the span of 10 minutes I was just bombarded with ads for medications and that quiet voice at the end of the commercials that lists all of the side effects for it, I just thought it was ironic that there is that one pill to cure whatever, but then it gives you all of these side effects that you didn't have before, so what's the point,” said Jade. “So I scribbled down ‘One Pill,' chuckling to myself and it just kind of evolved into that commentary of pharmaceutical culture and nostalgia of a quick fix.”
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