Search party

CALL off the search. Katie Melua has arrived, knocking Dido off her perch, leaving Fame Academy winner Alex Parks in the starting blocks, and selling 300,000 copies of her debut album since November.

Her first tour was announced at short notice in late January, too late for York Barbican Centre's spring brochure, but word of mouth spread quickly, so quickly that next Friday's show at the Barbican has sold out.

Did she expect such a rapid rise for her blend of jazz and blues?

"No, not really. The biggest bonus for me has been the way it's happened," says Katie, the 19-year-old singer songwriter, who graduated only last July with distinction from the Brit School for Performing Arts in London.

It was while studying for her BTEC and Music A-level that Katie caught the attention of composer, producer and former Wombles front man Mike Batt. He was visiting the school ostensibly to seek musicians to form a jazz band, but on the spur of the moment Katie decided to perform her Eva Cassidy tribute, Faraway Voice, at the showcase.

"It was a very last-minute thing," she says. "I wasn't even going to do an audition. The school always has people coming from the record industry; usually they're producers or A&R people, and the only reason I did it was because Mike was a songwriter - though I didn't know who Mike Batt was!"

Her performance so impressed Batt that he promptly took her under his wing, while she stayed on at school to complete her studies.

Term over, they set to work on recording her debut album, Call Off The Search.

"I really hadn't expected it to take off so quickly. I was just making this album, quite slowly, and we were trying to get a record deal and it didn't really work out at first. A lot of record companies liked it but none of them wanted to sign me with the material that I was doing - precisely the same material that's selling so well now," says Katie. "We had one or two offers but they wanted to re-direct the record and so we said 'No'. Mike said 'We can do it ourselves'."

Batt decided to put out the record on his own label, Dramatico, based in Farnham. "The greatest thing is that we have achieved it. We've done it independently and it kind of shows other musicians that it is possible to do it that way," says Katie.

"We hired independent promotion, and to be honest, it was hard work but Jazz FM was very supportive and so was Terry Wogan and then when people heard the record there seemed to be a lot of positive responses."

Call Off The Search features compositions by both Batt and Melua, and the likes of Top Ten single Closest Thing To Crazy and the title track (next month's new single) affirm their mutual love of songwriting.

"I would like to think people have bought the record for the songs, hopefully both for the lyrics and the moods of the music. It's nice melodically, and the music is not about production but music in its purest form," says Katie

She had not envisaged a career in music when growing up, first in Georgia in the former USSR, then in Belfast from the ages of eight to 13, before her father's work as a doctor brought the family to Cheam in South East London.

"Music was always a hobby and I've always written songs but we were always moving around because of my dad's job, and it was only about four years ago that I started wanting to do it seriously.

"How it stared is that I pleaded and pleaded with my dad for a studio at home, and that's how I got into songwriting. The first guitar I played was my boyfriend's, and I only bought my first one last year, for £300, which was all I could afford at the time."

Her desire to progress took her to the Brit School for Performing Arts, and led her to play in bars and clubs around London. Such is Katie's natural joy at performing her music, her debut nationwide tour holds no fears for her, no matter that expectations will have been heightened by Call Off The Search's three-week run at the top of the charts this month.

"I'm not nervous. Playing concerts is an important part of my job and I can't wait to go out and play with more or less the same band that played on the album," says Katie, whose acoustic guitar playing will be accompanied by piano, bass, electric guitar and drums. "The staging is going to be quite simple. The focus will always be on the music as I want people to be blown away by the singing and the playing."

This year she will be promoting Call Off The Search in Europe, Australia and South East Asia, and America is on the "To Do list". She will visit her Georgia homeland too. "I go back there every summer, to see my grandparents and cousins, and I hope to do a show there. That would be great," she says.

She will take the chance to write new material whenever she can, on the road, at home. "I still have that home studio I had in Cheam. I'm slowly updating it in Farnham, where I now live," she says. "When the time is right I will do the second album, and it will be a different record, but being young and on an independent label, I don't feel any pressure."

After everything that has happened so quickly, there is no need to rush the next step. Call Off The Search is a title that suggests this is her moment.

"When we were looking for an album title, we wanted the one that would be most relevant to me as an artist, and after we finally decided on the right style for the record, it was like saying I'm going to call off the search now."

Call off the search, Katie Melua can be found in York next Friday, on her first ever visit to the city.

Katie Melua, York Barbican Centre, March 5, 7.30pm. SOLD OUT.

Updated: 15:33 Thursday, February 26, 2004