Biography:

Until recently, Barbara Lynn Doran didn’t feel right about labeling herself a country singer. Put bluntly, she always felt she didn’t quite fit the bill. “I’ve always tried to be a storyteller, but I’ll never be a southern country girl. That’s not who I am,” she says. “I don’t sing with a ‘twang’, and even if I tried to fake it, it wouldn’t happen, but I love the storytelling aspect of country music.”

From early on, Doran was drawn to artists who didn’t mince words in telling their stories, in particular artists like 80’s pop icon Madonna and female singer/songwriters of the 1990’s like Sheryl Crow, Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette. But while country music wasn’t her first love, with the release of her new single, ‘Forgot To Love Me’ in January 2012, the Whitby, Ontario based singer/songwriter shows off an affinity for the genre that sounds as if she was born to it.

Truth to tell, finding out exactly where she does fit in has been a lifelong process, Doran says. Growing up, she often felt as if few people really knew her. In part, that was a situation of her own making, she explains. “I would say only a few people I’ve met in my life truly do, but maybe that’s because I don’t let them get to know me. It’s not that I’m bad at relationships, I think I just struggle between being starved for affection and not wanting to lose control.”

That’s something Doran has always expressed more clearly as a performer, and in her songwriting, than she’s been willing to off stage and outside of her songs. Even as a child she projected an outward calm as a shield, only letting her guard down when she retreated to the privacy of her own room, or the basement of her family’s home to write out her frustrations and express her feelings of love and hope in her journal. In time, those early journal entries became poetry and then lyrics. Eventually, what started as a way of dealing with her struggle to maintain positive relationships in a family that was often dysfunctional became the raw material she’s continued to mine as a songwriter since she writing her first complete song in her mid teens.

As far back as Doran can remember music has been a part of her life. “My Grandfather played piano and I would fiddle around with melodies whenever we went over there. I guess that’s where it all started. I was always singing and learning songs. It came naturally. I didn’t even think about it, it just happened.” It wasn’t until her early twenties, however, that Doran began to get serious about pursuing music as a career; recording a demo of her original material, putting her own band together and playing gigs at local Toronto venues. Still, she was unsure what type of music best suited her voice as a songwriter.

While Doran has the chops to pull off songs from many genres, finding a style that best enabled her to tell her own stories eluded her. Although people repeatedly had said her voice was custom made for singing country, she remained resistant to focusing exclusively on a style she felt her urban upbringing didn’t quite fit with, and only occasionally listened to growing up. “In Scarborough there was no country station, but my dad’s in trucking – it’s the family business. He’s probably the only person I heard play country music.”

Having said that, Doran is hardly your typical city girl. As a teen, she spent more time out of the city than in it, indulging a passion for horseback riding that ultimately led her to compete nationally and rivaled her interest in music for a time.

Ultimately, however, music won out. Over the years, in taking every gig she could, she often found herself singing country music and soon began to see similarities between the stories she felt compelled to tell and the matter of fact, true to life lyrics of songs performed by the likes of Sara Evans and Miranda Lambert.

By the time Doran recorded her debut, self-titled EP with producer/songwriter Murray Daigle at Toronto’s MDS Studios in 2009, she had begun to develop a sound that, while still heavily influenced by pop/rock, leaned more towards country than it did toward any one of her early influences. In doing so, Doran found herself able to express herself more candidly than ever – detailing the feelings of isolation that she felt set her apart from others and her thankfulness to the rare few she felt took the time to understand her on tracks like ‘Little Misunderstood’, ‘Innocence’ and ‘Take It Slow’.

If her debut EP found Doran taking the first steps in defining her own brand of country, the follow up – as yet untitled and scheduled for release in 2012 – finds her settling comfortably a signature style that treads the line neatly between new country and pop. What sets Doran’s music apart, however, may be a function the wide range of influences that made it difficult for here to settle on one style in the first place.

With ‘Forgot To Love Me’ she’s definitely moving in a clearly defined musical direction, but there are hints of her past influences – from 80’s pop and R&B, to roots and alt. rock – haunting the edges of her songs. And while ‘Forgot To Love Me’ still finds Doran focusing heavily on the feelings of doubt and isolation that drove her to write originally, it radiates the sense that as long as you take life step by step, and throw your heart into it with every footfall, it will all work out for the best somewhere along the way.

That certainly seems to be the case Doran’s musical career. Since finding a genre she can truly call home, she’s thrown the doors wide open, taking every opportunity possible to refine her chops as a songwriter. While she continues to develop her skills with co-writers such as Murray Daigle, Angelo, ‘Levi’ Themelkos (Neverest, Keshia Chante) and Rachael Bawn close to home, she’s also developing ties with a growing network of Nashville based recording artists/songwriters. Among them, Sally Barris, whose songs have been recorded by Lee Ann Womack and Martina McBride, and have appeared in films including the 2010 hit, Country Strong.

“When I release these songs I want to make sure they’re as good as they can possibly be. I’ve been down to Nashville six or seven times in the last two years and I’m always trying to become a better lyric writer and storyteller. Even though I’ve been a songwriter for years, I feel like I’m just starting to scratch the surface.”