CDBaby Editors Pick! Smoky and eclectic, Tara takes you back to early era jazz, and adds contemporary themes, poetic lyrics, and sassy hooks. To inspire her latest songwriting, Tara’s turntable spun constantly with Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Augustin Lara, and Irving Berlin. “I was inspired by the way lyrics told stories, and by the front and center melodies and hooks of 1930’s jazz. And lyrics were funny! There was more irony and tongue and cheek humor then.” With these vintage jazz sensibilities in mind, Tara set out to write a stomp (“Recession Stomp”), swing (“Rumor Mill Swing”), and jazz ballads for her fourth CD, Torch and Sass. Tara set out to explore Torch as a genre. Everyone knows the old torch lament sung by a woman, who stays up all night drinking coffee, waiting for her man to come home. But for Tara, torch sensibilities fit well into current themes: “feeling helpless about things we can’t affect, like earthquakes and tsunamis,” ("Flux and Flow" was written following th