Sam Obernik

Sam Obernik is funny, resilient, clever, and one of … ooh, how many good British female singer-songwriters can you think of? It's not really what we're best known for in the UK, but Obernik's ready to change that. She's what she terms an 'efficient' songwriter: "I don't go and sit gazing into space with my notebook," she explains. In fact, this 26 year-old divorcée dictated one of her best numbers while she was driving - to her doe-eyed seven year-old son Billy, who whipped out his trusty notebook and got scribbling. This is not to say the songs aren't heartfelt. In their scatting, ironic way, they reach deep into emotional territory, charting the highs and grizzly lows of love and life, and come out the other side as a bunch of sexy, hypnotic rallying calls. The vocal and sensibilities conjure up everything from a tousled Ricki Lee Jones to Maria Muldaur, Ani DiFranco, even a soupçon of Cerys. Quite a mix.

Sam was born in London of Greek descent. Adopted as a baby by the Czech-Jewish-Irish Oberniks, she grew up in Dublin. At the age of 15, she started busking - Prince, the Stones, country airs - around Temple Bar with a group of mates. "It was a wall of sound, and we'd annoy the shit out of the fishmonger because we used their big marble doorway, brilliant for acoustics." Leaving school at 16 with a paltry 10 O-Levels, Sam moved into bedsitland and waitressing. During the day, she'd be writing music: "I was this pained teenager waiting for my moment." At night, she organised the bar at Dublin's Wildebeest club: "A mad place with dead animals on the walls. They had live everything, from live comedy to live sex. I was knee-high to a duck's arse, dressed in next to nothing, and practically running the place." Then it got hectic. After a brief singing stint in LA with friends who had been in Alan Parker's film The Commitments, Obernik moved to London, married, and found herself touring with Terry Hall. "He is as doo-lally as I am, so we got on really well." She toured until she was five months pregnant and then settled down to be a mum. When Billy was three, his parents' marriage broke down and his father left. "I refused to let the break-up be bitter, but it hurt me very deeply. And as soon as the divorce papers came through the guy got remarried, which made me physically ill."

Alone again, it was back to waitressing. "I gave myself until the end of 2001 to make a success of my music." She wrote and wrote and went out gigging with a big band - too damn big, with nine players and a crazy vaudeville-type show that packed venues, gave her back some confidence but ultimately swamped what she really wanted to do. Then fate introduced her to her current production team, Jinx & Touchwood. "Suddenly we had a sound."

After just a couple of months of teaming up with Jinx & Touchwood, Sam signed with East West, which happened to coincide with being asked to provide the vocals for Tim Deluxe's 2002 summer smash "It Just Won't Do".

Obernik's got the sass, but too much brainpower. She may sing about birds, bees, fireflies and bad men, but she is tough and streetwise. Ask for three words that describe her, and she grins at the dumb-ass question, shakes her head and says, "No. No. No." Explain, but never compromise.

Sam's debut album will be released early 2003 on East West.

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