Kendall Payne

“I don’t like classifying my music as pop or alternative or whatever it might be called. To me, it’s like a stew of different thoughts, emotions and feelings,” says the California-native who wrote or co-wrote all thirteen of the tracks on JORDAN’S SISTER, her powerful 1999 debut for Capitol Records. The album was produced and arranged by Ron Aniello with the exception of the track “Honest” which was produced by Glen Ballard.

To her first recording, Kendall brings a refreshing lyrical honesty displayed in tunes that cover a whole range of subjects from the media-created standards of female beauty in the ’90s (expressed in the infectious, witty ode “Supermodels”) to the dilemma of a crisis pregnancy (revealed in ” It’s Not The Time”). There is poignancy in the reflective “On My Bones” which Kendall describes as “a prophetic song about my life, about the challenges that lie ahead, about the questions you deal with as a teenager.”

The powerful “Formerly Known As,” one of the songs that helped Kendall land her deal with Capitol registers the frustration of constant comparison with her older sister and the search for identity: “I called this album JORDAN’S SISTER because the songs are like a snapshot of a particular time in my life when I felt somewhat insignificant, when I felt like I was nothing more than Jordan’s younger sister. She’s two years older than me and as with many siblings, there was some rivalry, some frustration and tension. We’re much better now and she’s thrilled that I named the album after her!”

Humor takes center stage on the driving “Perfect By Thursday,” written as a result of a school girl crush: “I went to the gym every day, I read stuff so I could be funny and smart for the Thursday that I was going to meet this guy and it all failed!” Kendall states with deadpan dryness. And there is real emotion as she recounts the heart-wrenching tale of a friend in the hauntingly tender “Fatherless At 14,” an emotional standout on the album: “A friend of mine was at her younger brother’s football game with her family and her father started to feel uncomfortable. The next thing, he had walked away to get out of the sun and he lay down and died. I spent the night with my friend and I listened as she cried about how life would never be the same for her. About a month later, I wrote this song as a gift to her.”

The gift of expressing herself creatively has been a central theme in Kendall Payne’s life as far as she can remember. Born in Santa Monica but raised in nearby Malibu (“very modestly – I’m definitely not a Malibu rich brat!”), Kendall’s first exposure to music of any kind came when the woman who carpooled her to school played Broadway show tunes in her car. “I loved the idea of performing in shows like ‘Les Miserables’ after I heard all that music and I joined a local theater troupe because I thought that one day I wanted to be on Broadway myself!”

When she was around thirteen, Kendall attended a local concert where an eight- month pregnant performer “kicked off her shoes, strapped on her guitar and started playing and singing. I got to know her afterwards and I got all her demos, all her songs. She inspired me to want to create my own music and about two years later, I started performing some of the songs I’d written.”

A performance one Sunday evening led to a fortuitous meeting with future producer, Ron Aniello. “Ron heard my performance and called me the following Wednesday to ask if I minded him playing my material to some music industry executives.” A series of meetings with different labels eventually resulted in Kendall’s signing with Capitol through A&R executive Perry Watts-Russell.

“We had no real road map in making the album,” explains Kendall. “We thrashed through a lot of ideas and it was like an organic process.” Having missed, by her own admission, “the whole pop scene,” the music Kendall and producer Aniello created for JORDAN’S SISTER was little influenced by the sounds or styles of other ’90s female singer/songwriters. “I didn’t listen to pop music almost like a reaction to my sister Jordan. You see, she was always popular and I thought that anything she was into was thought of as cool and I couldn’t like anything she liked! Creating my own music was my way of escape, my way of expressing my own individuality.”

That same uniqueness is evident throughout JORDAN’S SISTER: breathtaking in its lyrical and musical approach, the album heralds the arrival of an important new artist who has already earned kudos for her performance on the 1998 Lilith Music Fair. “Being on shows with artists like Sarah McLachlan, Natalie Merchant, The Indigo Girls, Sinead O’Connor and Bonnie Raitt was amazing. I remember one day walking around with my artist’s badge and some girl on the other side of the gate was pointing at me, telling her friend, ‘look she’s an artist!’ That’s when I pinched myself and said, ‘wow, if it hadn’t been for the way things have gone in the last couple of years, I’d be there on the other side of the gate too!’ But I stay grounded because I still have the same friends around me I had before I got my record deal, oh and my parents make sure I still take out the trash every Wednesday night!”

Whether sharing her desire to discover more about who she is (“Closer To Myself”), expressing her personal faith (“Never Leave”) or addressing the human condition (“Honest”), Kendall Payne brings authenticity and originality to her work on JORDAN’S SISTER. “Yes, I do feel a kindred spirit with women of my own age,” she says with a smile. “But hopefully my music will resonate with everyone.” From “Wonderland,” which evokes another time and place to “Modern Day Moses,” a percussive highlight that raises the question of how each individual can make a difference in life, Kendall Payne offers a richly textured tapestry of music with JORDAN’S SISTER, the auspicious debut of a compelling and exciting new artist for the ’90s and beyond.