By Stephanie MacLellan - The Chronicle-Journal
June 23, 2005
Lee Aaron is on the phone from her home in the small ocean-side town of White Rock, B.C.
In the background, you can hear the cries of her one-year-old daughter. In a few days, she's heading out to play not heavy metal, but jazzy pop at a concert.
It's not how she pictured her musical career, when she was 18 and just starting out. But the years have taught her that there's more than one way to be a successful musician.
That's something she'd like to pass along Sunday in Thunder Bay, when she hosts a Q and A session at the Thundering Women Festival.
"I don't say that from any standpoint of pride, that I've been successful and I've made all the right choices," she said. "I made a lot of bad choices when I was young and naive, and I think that I would like to share my mistakes with people."
As Canada's queen of hard rock in the 1980s and early '90s, Aaron toured the world and sold millions, with songs like "Whatcha Do To My Body" and "Some Girls Do."
She doesn't regret that chapter of her life, but says she made some mistakes as she was starting out. As a teenager, her first manager from focused her career more on her looks and less on her music, and she didn't know enough about the industry to stop him.
"He really sort of Svengali'd me into a little cheesecake pin-up girl," Aaron said. "It took me quite a few years to live that down, and to re-direct the way things were headed for me."
By the mid-'90s, grunge had unseated classic rock as the mainstream genre of choice, and Aaron found it hard to battle people's perceptions of her as a rock chick. So she sold her house in Toronto, moved to B.C. and took some time off from music.
By 1997, she was ready to try something new. She went back to jazz and blues, the music she listened to when she was growing up. To her surprise, critics loved it.
"It wasn't purely a strategy," she said. "I thought, I could do something that influenced me when I was young, that I grew up with, that I love. Something completely different that no one expects."
Aaron released Slick Chick, a collection of classic jazz songs, in 2000. Her most recent release, Beautiful Things, features more of her own songs, with a sophisticated blend of jazz and pop.
She produced and recorded the album at her home studio.
Now 42, Aaron isn't signed to a major label any more. That means she sells fewer records, but she earns more from each record she sells. She also has complete artistic control over her music, and the way she's marketed.
And she gets to choose when she heads out on tour, meaning she can spend more time with daughter Angella, and helping people with special needs with her husband.
"When I was younger, I remember thinking to myself, 'When I become a big star,' -- that sounds cheesy but that's how I thought -- 'my dream is to not have to tour ... to have a studio in my home, create my own music.'
"To me, with my life right now, I have achieved that."
Aaron is playing on the main stage Saturday at the Thundering Women festival. She's not worried about how fans of her older music will react to her new material.
"I have a lot of former fans who come out, and a lot are surprised that they really like what I'm doing now," she said. "It's not a cerebral, sleepy jazz show. It's high energy, and it's a lot of fun.
"It's still me, and it's still my persona. I've just shifted my musical style."
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Lee Aaron performs on the main stage at Thundering Women Saturday night. Her Q and A session will be held in the learning tent Sunday at 1:30 p.m.