Second chance saloon
15-years after saying “no thanks” to the people who made a star out of LeeAnn Rimes, Luan Parle has made an album that should finally see her take her place among country’s elite.
Colm O Hare, 20 Oct 2006
13 years between albums is not unusual these days, especially when it comes to industry veterans like Brian Wilson and The Who.
For a mere 25-year-old however, such an extended gap seems almost unbelievable. But Wicklow singer-songwriter Luan Parle, who this month releases Free, her major label debut, recorded her first album when she was just 12 years of age.
“It is hard to believe it was so long ago,” she laughs, sitting in the Dublin offices of her record company Sony/BMG. “I was on The Late Late Toy Show when I was 11. Pat Kenny saw me and asked would I do something on Kenny Live. After that I got a phone call from Anam records and recorded an album.”
Unusually for a young Irish singer at the time, the album, First Impressions, was country-oriented, which she says was always part of her musical upbringing.
“Country was always on in the house so I tended to lean towards it,” she expands. “Everything from Dolly Parton to The Eagles and The Judds as well as bluegrass artists like Alison Krauss and even Sheryl Crow who I’d consider to be country in some ways.”
News about the precocious young singer soon reached Nashville and the record companies flew to Ireland to sign her up.
“Myself and my dad met them in the Killiney Court Hotel,” she says of her would-be child star days. “They told me it was all going to be great and that I’d have a private tutor and all the clothes I wanted. I can remember them saying, ‘Do you like Wrangler?’ I thought, ‘Jesus this is brilliant, free jeans and jackets’. I was saying to my dad in the car on the way home how brilliant it was going to be. But I got home and it was serious discussion time. My dad had his own business and my mam was looking after the four of us. Someone would have had to go over to the States with me, so they said ‘no’ and I went back to school. Just after that LeAnne Rimes came out and she was twelve as well. I did think at the time that it could have been me.”
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