Sometimes a personal tragedy can be turned into a creative triumph. Such is the case with “Run Your Race“ the new song and album from jazz/soul diva Kandace Springs. She wrote the song as a tribute to her late father Kenneth “Scat” Springs, a great singer in his own right who passed away last year. “My dad was a track star in college. But he spent the last two years of his life in a wheelchair. After he passed away, I was inspired to write this song, to tell him that I know that he is free now, to run like he used to.” The resulting song is the most personal and heartfelt of Springs’ career, and a fitting centerpiece to her new album Run Your Race, which she says is “absolutely the most personal record I’ve ever made, or ever will make “ Rewind two years ago, however, and recording this album, or creating music at all, was the furthest thing from Kandace’s mind. The pandemic and lockdown had taken away all of her work as a touring artist, and out of a well-honed sense of survival, she turned to her second passion: cars. “I’ve always made my own way since getting out of high school “, she says. I used to park cars for a living, and then I started buying them, fixing them up, and selling them. When my career took off, I still kept doing it for fun. So when the gigs went away, I just went into flipping cars full time.” She admits that it was a defense mechanism: “It was like music had let me down, I couldn’t depend on it to make a living, so I turned away from it.”
What turned things around for Kandace was her father’s passing. “It didn’t hit me at first,” she says, “but about a year later I suddenly thought: I want to make an album to pay tribute to my father. And that’s what got me going again.” To start with, Kandace was sitting on a treasure trove of songs that she had written throughout her career, that somehow had been overlooked through her first 3 albums. “I think maybe I was not confident enough to show them to everybody,” she says now. “A lot of them I wrote when I was really young, and just learning. But they are honest, and they are all me.”
Several of the highlights from the album- the lush, string-laden “So Far, So Near“ and the beautiful, pensive “Look” were in fact written by Kandace while she was still a teenager. Her musical journey began when her father brought home an old upright piano that a family friend was throwing out; within weeks she had taught herself to play the theme from “Soul Train”. Suitably impressed, her father arranged for lessons from friend Reggie Wooten, of the famous Wooten Brothers. But mostly Kandace, who was home-schooled, was left on her own to learn her art. She spent her high school years absorbing both jazz and classical standards by ear and intuition. “That’s how I learned, and how I still like to play, “ she says. And at Scat’s insistence, she began singing as well. She started wearing out records by Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and her first musical girl crush, Norah Jones. “When I heard Norah’s first album, that’s when I said, I want to do what she does.”
But as the saying goes, easier said than done. Fresh out of high school, Kandace found herself working a job parking cars at a hotel in downtown Nashville; the one perk of the job was that she got to sing and play piano in the lounge upstairs. “Everybody in the music business probably passed by me at one time or another, but nobody ever stopped.” It was during this time that she really developed her mastery of the jazz ballad, as shown on this album by her incredible interpretation of “Wild is The Wind.” “I always loved Nina Simone’s version,” says Kandace. “But then I heard Shirley Horn do it, she’s so amazing. So I took those two influences and used them to make something that’s me.” Her burgeoning talent soon attracted the attention of Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken, hitmaking songwriters and producers who had just years before discovered a 15-year-old Rihanna, signed her to their production company and shepherded her rise to stardom. Within days of hearing Kandace’s demo, Evan was in Nashville meeting her and her family, and a partnership was born that continues to this day. Kandace moved to New York City, to let Sturken and Rogers fully mentor and bring out her talent. One of their first writing collaborations was “Chasing Shadows”, which is brought to life on this album with a simmering groove provided by her long-time rhythm section of drummer Camille Gainer-Jones and bassist Caylen Bryant, and with added spice from flutist Elena Pinderhughes (Herbie Hancock).
Her career began to move at an accelerating pace, and within a few short years she found herself signed to Blue Note Records by chairman Don Was, and appearing on “The Late Show with David Letterman”, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”. Her experience and abilities continued to grow as she moved to Los Angeles, and began working with many veterans of the music scene, among them Gregg Wells (Katy Perry), who’s represented on this album by the infectious groove of “Pulse”. Also written at this time was “Broken Keys”, which shows Kandace at her most solitary and personal. “It’s not really jazz, not really R&B..” she says. “All I know for sure is that it’s all Kandace.”
Kandace could hardly have imagined the next person who would become part of her musical journey: Prince. He saw a video of Kandace doing her version of Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me”, and messaged her directly. A week later, incredibly, she found herself performing with him at Paisley Park for the 30th anniversary of the album Purple Rain. Thus began a close mentorship between Kandace and the “Purple One,” as she still refers to him. They wrote songs and shared thoughts on all things musical. “He told me that I needed to be more true to myself, don’t listen to anybody else, just my own heart. That really stuck with me, and I’ve followed that advice ever since, especially with this new album.” His influence can be heard most clearly on this album with “Closer To Me,” a classic R&B love ballad that brings to mind such Prince classics as “The Beautiful Ones.”
As her music progressed, so did her live performing career; over the next few years, she found herself in front of audiences around the world, in such storied venues as London’s Royal Albert Hall, and at legendary festivals including Newport and Monterey. An appearance with Christian McBride at the Istanbul Jazz Festival led to his appearance on her last album The Women Who Raised Me, which also featured contributions from friends Norah Jones and David Sanborn.
That album ended up being released on the very day most of the US went on lockdown. Fast forward to 2022 and Kandace, having lost her father, finally found in that the inspiration to create new music. “All of a sudden I knew what I had to do – write a song for my dad. He was such a huge influence on me, I needed to thank him for it in the only way I could now.” The concept and title for “Run Your Race” came to her one day while she was at home in Nashville, working on one of her classic cars. Words and music came tumbling out, and the song was finished in a day. She went right into the studio with her band, and the finished record was done almost just as quickly. Shortly thereafter, the song got its debut in front of a live audience, and the response was immediate and overwhelming. “Literally after every performance people come up to me with tears in their eyes, and tell me how they relate to what the song’s about; I guess that means they’re feeling what I feel when I sing it”.
True to her ever-growing independence and sense of musical freedom, Kandace sets no boundaries on herself as to her choice of material, even interpreting contemporary pop songs when they inspire her. Such is the case with her gorgeous version of “What Was I Made For”, Billie Eilish’s theme from the movie Barbie. “I was in the theater, and the credits started rolling I heard this amazing song I wasn’t expecting. I knew right away that I wanted to do my own take on it.” For Kandace, that means migrating any song into her own world of jazz and soul, a process she calls “Kandacizing”. “With this song, it was easy. It has its own kind of soul; I just bring my soul to it.” The results are classic Kandace.
Finally releasing Run Your Race after a wait of almost four years, Kandace has many feelings: satisfaction, closure, and ”relief!” she laughs. “I feel that this album has been inside of me for a long time, and it’s so great to bring it out into the world for everyone to hear. When they hear it, I feel like they’re finally going to be meeting the real me.”
