Dawn Sears

Dawn Sears (* 7. December 1961 in East Grand Forks , Minnesota as Dawn Marie Skari ; † 11. December 2014 in Gallatin , Tennessee ) was an American country music singer and songwriter . Especially from the early 1990s she was considered a fixture in the US country music scene, although she could never really gain a foothold in the Billboard country songs . From this time, however, she came to engagements alongside other greats such as Tracy Byrd , Vince Gill , Patty Loveless or The Time Jumpers , where she appeared alongside her husband Kenny Sears, a fiddler .

life and career

Dawn Skari was born in 1961 in the small town of East Grand Forks in the US state of Minnesota, around 140 kilometers from the border with Canada . As a child she was enthusiastic about country music and listened to her parents' classical country music collection, where she was influenced by artists such as George Jones , Merle Haggard , Lefty Frizzell , Connie Smith and Dolly Parton . At the age of eleven she was given her first guitar; At the age of 14 she took part in a talent competition at the VFW Hall in Grand Forks , North Dakota , with the song Satin Sheets , with which Jeanne Pruett gained national fame two years earlier . This was also the first time that she stood at the microphone in front of a larger audience. In the end, Skari emerged as the winner of the competition, although she interrupted in between because she was briefly overwhelmed by her own voice volume. After winning other talent and singing competitions, Skari became a fixture on the local Minnesota club scene. Before she was 18 years old, after completing school and with the consent and support of her parents, she left her parents' home to perform nationwide. With her own band, in which she acted as the front woman, Dawn Skari toured the western and midwestern US. After she had already been in the business for a few years, she met her future husband Kenny Skari in Las Vegas in 1986 , whom she followed to Nashville a year later , where she performed with her band and he appeared alongside Mel Tillis . Six months after this new meeting, the two married.

Dawn Sears had her first breakthrough in TNN's Nashville Now with Ralph Emery . After she was called one day by Emery and asked if she wanted to appear on his morning show, after a total of three appearances in Nashville Now, the request for regular appearances by the young singer on the show followed. Through this regular television presence, she also got her first contract with a major label in 1991 , where she was signed by the Warner Music Group and released the album What a Woman Wants to Hear in the same year . The album came on October 15, 1991, distributed by Warner Bros. Records , on the market, but had only moderate success thereafter. While she had already released the single San Antone a year earlier , which did not make it into the US and CAN country charts , the first album release Till You Come Back to Me was released in the same year , which also did not Placement achieved. In 1991, with Good Goodbye penned by Paulette Carlson , Bob DiPiero and Pat McManus, the first chart entry followed with a 77th place in the Canadian country charts. During this time she lost her interest in country music and wanted to end this chapter of her life and go to college and study medicine instead. Before she had the chance to matriculate at a university, she received a call from the up-and-coming Vince Gill asking her to be the backup singer for his tour. Before that, Gill had already worked on one of Sears' songs as the background vocals. So it happened that Dawn Sears was represented with her voice on Gill's subsequent album I Still Believe in You , especially on the single Say Hello , as a backup.

This was also the first step in a long-term friendship and collaboration with Vince Gill, who brought her in contact with other great musicians, especially in the early days. This included a temporary collaboration with Reba McEntire . In 1994 she was also involved in Tracy Byrd's debut album entitled Tracy Byrd , where she appeared as Byrd's duet partner on the song An Out of Control Raging Fire . Also that year, Dawn Sears was contacted by the MCA , which she then signed. After she was already preparing to work with Tony Brown , who had already marketed Vince Gill, Reba McEntire and George Strait as a producer , she was soon transferred to Decca Records , where she was supposed to help rebuild the fallen former major label. That year she also backed up Patty Loveless' s studio album When Fallen Angels Fly , but only needed her second studio album through Decca Records a week after the Loveless album was released. From the album Nothin 'but Good , which was produced by Mark Wright , two more singles were released this year. While Runaway Train made it to 62nd place in the US and 71st place in the Canadian country charts , possibly because of the worldwide success of Soul Asylum 's song of the same name a year earlier, the main single remained Nothin 'but Good without any notable success.

After the second major label did not achieve national success either, Sears decided to leave Decca Records in order to only produce music and perform under their own direction. In the following years she worked with various artists and was again represented as a background singer in the eighth studio album by Patty Loveless The Trouble with the Truth , released in 1996 . She was also involved in 1998 as a backup on Chad Brock 's debut album of the same name. In 2001, long-time friend Patty Loveless released her eleventh studio album, Mountain Soul , on which she covered Out of Control Raging Fire , originally sung by Vince Gill and Dawn Sears, and released as a duet with Travis Tritt . A year later she brought out the album Dawn Sears on her own and was again to be heard often on the side of Gill; for example on his studio album Next Big Thing , released on February 11, 2003 . In addition to her music career, Sears, who was also close friends with Larry Gatlin , among others, began her long-planned medical career . Instead of studying medicine, she started training as an aesthetician in the 1990s and then worked as a licensed clinical aesthetician until her death, where she even had her own skin care practice in Goodlettsville , her later hometown, with the company Skinsation, LLC, founded in 1999 ; previously the company was based in Nashville.

In the past few years, Dawn Sears has often acted alongside her husband Kenny in the Time Jumpers . In February 2012, she was diagnosed with later stage lung cancer. Stage IIIB was diagnosed in March 2013, after which the singer had to undergo additional therapies. Nevertheless, it was regularly in use until June 2014; Among other things, also at numerous appearances of the four times Grammy nominated Time Jumpers. On the night of December 11, 2014, Dawn Sears lost the two-year battle with cancer and died at the age of 53 in Gallatin, Tennessee Hospital. She left behind her husband and their daughter Tess.

Web links

• Official website of Dawn Sears (English)
• Dawn Sears benefit side to lung cancer research (English)
• Dawn Sears on ancestry.com
• Report on the death of Dawn Sears on the official website of The Tennessean (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dawn Sears Cancer Diagnosis: Time Jumpers Member Undergoing Treatment , accessed December 29, 2014
2. ↑ DAWN SEARS, MEMBER OF THE TIME JUMPERS AND VINCE GILL'S BAND, DIES AT 53 ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English), accessed December 29, 2014  
3. ↑ Dawn Sears fought a tough battle , accessed December 29, 2014