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Ever the go-getter, Start also launched her own record label, Lone Coyote Records, à la Ani DiFranco. “Why sit around and wait for someone to notice you and give you permission to record and tour?” she asks. “Nah! DIY is the way ahead.” The result is her latest release, Go, which she has deemed her “best work ever.”
Go personifies Start's attitude toward life, though the title came about a bit more innocuously than one might imagine. “[It's] from my name,” she says. “I've spent my life saying, ‘Al Start. Start, like go,' to explain my name. I wanted this album to have a really positive title, something that is like a launch or beginning. The word go can be used in loads of different ways, and features in almost all of the songs in some way. So it seemed a fitting title.”
Filled with a diverse selection of song topics, the album features everything from cross-dressers (“Stickleback”) to songs about noisy upstairs tenants in the sex trade (“Rent”). “I try to pick unusual topics for songs, just to take people by surprise and give them a break from the dull old tripe that keeps getting churned out,” Start says. “I like to write about things we can all identify with, but with a twist, [and] I love a good story.”
The album also has the expected love song or two, though Start is quick to mention that's not her forte. “I write about all kinds of things, not just women,” she says. “Diva magazine recently described me as a gay songwriter who writes about lady-lovin'. [That] couldn't be further from the truth!”
Her voice is reminiscent of sentimental lesbian songstresses like k.d. lang, but when Start does write about romance (with a twist, mind), most of her songs tend towards ambiguity, such as the beautifully acoustic “Waiting for Life.”
She believes this is where she's able to reach her audience, beyond the oft-used “lesbian singer-songwriter” label. “My music is not exclusively gay; in fact, I'd go so far as to say that there is very little reference to ‘gayness' in most of my songs,” she says. “I'm not a political activist. I'm a singer-songwriter.”
Still, she tends to stick with what she knows: “I write about women a lot because I don't know the first thing about men! If the song's about a woman I never try to hide this.”
Start has toured with seemingly everyone in the U.K. queer scene, from Horse to Belinda O'Hooley, and co-written songs with artists such as Jill Sobule. This summer she even played the main stage at EuroPride, in front of 25,000 fans in London's Trafalgar Square, and she has also reached countless fans through live concert webcasts on sites like virtualgig.co.uk.
In October 2006, Al hopes her fan base will continue to grow as she embarks on her own U.S. tour, hitting gay hotspots like Provincetown, Mass., and also making mainstream stops all along the East Coast, including New York and Boston. Then in November she comes home to finish her tour around England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, her first as a solo, headlining artist.
With her own record label and no one — not a religious upbringing, or a decade of cancer, and least of all music executives — to stop her, Start hopes to carry on being herself and writing about her extraordinary life. “I'm actually grateful for the experience in some ways,” she says. “It has shown me how to live for the moment and follow my heart. It's the reason I am who I am.”
Even her religious fanatic parents, she admits, have made her the strong, positive force she is today, and she wouldn't have it any other way. “I think it has made me stubborn, unwilling to take shit from people, and damn proud of who I am,” she says.
“I am out and proud and not ever going to let my sexuality be a reason for anyone to hold me back. It's the reverse psychology thing; I had so much to rebel against, and Jesus made me an arsey lesbian to piss my parents off. So I'm really just doing the Lord's work!”
Find out more about Al Start at alstart.co.uk, or purchase her album on iTunes.
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