Judie Tazuke at Burgess Hill

A year after the release of her retrospective album, Moon On A Mirrorball, Judie Tzuke is back with a new CD, One Tree Less – a memory of a very special tree.

Judie, best known for the huge hit single Stay With Me Till Dawn, explains: “Last year a tree in my garden died quite suddenly, and it was a really beautiful tree. It was a tree associated with lots of memories, with the children on it.

“I have no idea why it died. It was incredibly upsetting. And so I just wrote a song about it, about the end of something. Someone thought that it was about a death, and well, it was and it wasn’t. But it was about something that was important to me. It was right outside the window where I sit and write, the most beautiful cherry tree.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Another song rich in personal significance is Humankind: “I read an interview with Leona Lewis, and she was talking about her feelings for animals and about being vegetarian. I was quite struck by what she said.”

And so Judie wrote a song about Leona and also about her own daughter, Bailey Tzuke, a musician in her own right who features on the new album.

“Having Bailey become a vegetarian, it makes me see the world in a different way. It just makes me more aware of everything. It just made me think that I will be much more thoughtful about what I eat and what I do. I thought that I would make a few changes. I don’t buy any meat that is not organic and that has not had a normal life. I don’t wear fur anyway. I do wear leather, but I am just much more careful.”

Bailey will be joining Judie on tour (Burgess Hill, Martlets Hall, Saturday, March 17): “She will be doing some of her own songs as well and she will also be doing some songs with me.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“There are also two other songs on the album that I wrote with a Norwegian girl, but she has decided now that she does not want to do music any more. She found it very difficult. The music business is very difficult and hurtful. She has become a fitness trainer and is very happy.”

Judie can certainly sympathise: “Every day I find it difficult. I find it upsetting. It’s pretty much every day that I get knocked at some point or that something frustrates me with the business. But I don’t know what else I would do. The only things would be retirement or just carry and ignore the problems.

“The difficulty is that there is such a stranglehold on how you can get heard by people. If the main stations don’t want to play you, you are in trouble. I am lucky that I have got a certain amount of support. For me, I think that it has happened before and that it can happen again one day and that I was lucky to have success very early on in my career. But my friend in Norway didn’t understand - and I can understand that she didn’t understand.”

Related topics: