For the past nine years, singer/songwriter Sarah Sharp has been performing with her quintet every Thursday evening at the prestigious Elephant Room Jazz club in Austin. The former leader of critically acclaimed swingadelic band Jitterbug Vipers, and a highly respected commercial songwriter with Universal Music, Sharp has an exquisite voice and a cosmopolitan flair for selecting transcendent jazz standards. “We live for it.” she says with a wry smile. “My guitar player, the legendary Mitch Watkins, is such an Austin treasure. He only says yes to gigs that have soul. At the end of every Thursday, he says to me, I always feel better when I’m leaving than when I got here.” People had been asking Sharp to turn her weekly ritual into an album for a long time. Then, Austin-based guitar hero Eric Johnson stepped in and offered his recording studio. The result is Déjà Vu, a luminous debut that blends nocturnal, atmospheric arrangements with Sharp’s vocal prowess – at turns defiant, accepting, wise beyond her years, blessed with the ability to convey vulnerability through sound. “I’ve been playing with these musicians for years, and our closeness goes beyond being like a family,” she reflects.
If Sharp’s astonishing vocalizing is the centerpiece of Déjà Vu, its 11 tracks provide the wide cinematic canvas on which she traverses a haunting emotional journey. “I’m always striving to become whole while keeping my heart open - living in the flow of what my friends call Sarahdipity.”