Woman on Fire
Local singer Dalis makes a run at stardom with the release of her freshman album, Burn.
Jarrett Medlin
Courtesy Dalis (by Gavin Peters)
It’s a small but surprising confession from a Wichita performer poised for stardom.
On stage, Dalis strums her guitar with ferocity and belts out brutally honest lyrics of love and let-downs. Her freshman album, Burn, recently hit shelves and iTunes. The CD is the result of collaboration with a San Francisco-based producer who has worked with the likes of Elton John and Tori Amos and who knows talent when he hears it. The album’s band consists of musicians who have played with Guns & Roses, Tom Waits and Sting. Today, record labels and managers call, but Dalis searches for the right fit. “It’s not like music that you get right away,” she says. “It has a specific audience, and you have to hear it to get it.”
“Back to the start, and your heroes all left without you. Hold me, we’ll travel ’round the sun and find our way.” —“Sanctuary”
It began a decade ago in a club in Lawrence. In the mid-’90s, Dalis was a University of Kansas graduate working as a graphic designer and dating a local businessman she had met through work, a man named Gary Sharpe. One night, the couple was at a concert at Jazzhaus when Dalis leaned over and whispered how much she admired performers who could climb on stage and captivate an audience. Dalis’ own roots in music stretched back as far as she could remember. Her father was an art teacher who helped start Lotus, the popular Wichita band. While growing up in the small town of Burden, Kansas, Dalis and her father often sang Beatles songs like “Rocky Raccoon” in their living room. Dalis also played piano from the age of 8 until college, but she had taken a significant break from music. During that late night at Jazzhaus, however, everything changed. Upon hearing Dalis’ comment, Gary decided to rent out the bar as a birthday present.
Dalis still remembers stepping on stage for the first time. “It was terrifying—it still is,” she says. “But it’s a kind of terror that you come to love.” She hired a local guitar player and sang all cover tunes because she didn’t play guitar at the time, but the performance surprised even Gary. “Her gift was apparent right away,” he recalls.
For the next five years, that one night was the extent of Dalis’ music career. The couple had two children, Hunter and Blue, and moved to Wichita to start a real estate and marketing company known as River Sharpe. (Until recently, Dalis continued to do advertising, copywriting and website design for a handful of clients.) But the lyrics were still churning in Dalis’ head as she jotted thoughts of love and vulnerability in her journal. Finally, in 2003, Gary suggested she try writing her own lyrics, starting with her journal entries. The result was a personal revelation.
“Still whole, I interested nobody.” — Sylvia Plath
Dalis hesitates a moment, searching for the right words. “Music is such an elegant way of explaining something. It’s a way for you to take an emotion and say, ‘OK, I get it,’ then put it on the shelf and move on.” Take Burn, for instance. The album revolves almost entirely around the concept of love. “I think love is such an intense emotion, and it has so many facets,” says Dalis.
At times, the lyrics pour out. She wrote one song, “Sustain,” in five minutes. “I think I’d held that one inside for 15 years,” she says. Other times, she wrestles with words for months before abandoning them.
During her spare time in 2003, she penned songs and learned to play guitar. Then came her first real gig, opening for Moonlight Drive at The Shadow. The crowd that night consisted primarily of women who had gathered to see the local Doors cover band. What they didn’t expect was Dalis, a woman bearing her soul with original lyrics and heartfelt melodies. “I had so many women come up after the show and say, ‘I really felt that,’” she says. “The response was unbelievable. It was the biggest high I think I’ve ever had.”
She played at Lawrence’s Liberty Hall the next year, on December 4, 2004, and again the response was encouraging. Dalis decided it was time to get serious. She began playing regularly around Wichita, and Gary built her a small recording studio. A local following soon developed. It was time to take the next step.
“Can I change the world? I wish I could.” —“Sanctuary”
“Anyone who tells you recording is hard work is full crap,” says Dalis. In early 2006, she mailed out publicity kits to recording studios throughout the country. (Her knack for marketing didn’t hurt.) Within two days, she got a call. It was Joe Chicarrelli, a record producer from San Francisco. He wanted to meet with her that weekend.
On February 28, Dalis met Chicarrelli for the first time. There was an instant connection. “No one is as close to your own music as you are, but he knew every word and chord,” Dalis recalls. At the time, she had no idea that Chicarrelli had worked with artists like Elton John, U2, Beck and Counting Crows. (She discovered this later, when she Googled him.) During that meeting, he got on the phone and lined up a band for the album. There was Brain, the drummer for Guns & Roses; electric guitar player Joe Gore, who’s toured with Tracy Chapman, Tom Waits and P.J. Harvey; bass guitarist Kevin White; and guitarist Lyle Workman, who has played with Sheryl Crow and Sting.
Two weeks after the meeting, Dalis returned to San Francisco Soundworks to meet the band. Although she was intimidated at first, the band hit it off right away. “Everybody clicked, and it became something incredible so quickly,” she recalls. They would sleep until noon, begin recording at 6 p.m. and play until 1 a.m. During breaks, Brain told wild stories about Axl Rose. The studio was a constant buzz of sound. “It was hard to sleep because it was so intense every day,” she says. “It was just phenomenal.”
Throughout the four-month process, Dalis and Gary added their own personal touches. Gary laid down a cowbell track as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to a Saturday Night Live skit featuring Christopher Walken. Dalis also gave a credit to her son, Hunter, for helping write “Sanctuary,” the album’s ninth track. On May 3, Dalis wrote in an online journal, “With an album under my belt, several managers calling for me and a lot of sleep deprivation, I’m ready to come home.”
Burn was released in October, when Dalis was still looking for a manager and a record label. “I decided that at this stage of my life, I want to control the music,” she says. Having funded the album themselves, Dalis and Gary are searching for the right fit. In the mean time, the couple plans to move to Austin, Texas. “There’s quite a bit of industry buzz about the album there,” says Dalis, who hopes to regularly return to Kansas to see family and friends. “Austin is a good launching pad,” says Gary. “But Wichita will always be our home.”
