Richmond Hill, Ontario’s KATIE DAUSON Delivers A Sweet, Electric Love Song On New Single “Fresh Sugar”
Richmond Hill, Ontario musician Katie Dauson has released “Fresh Sugar”, a country rock love ballad built around the feeling of finally finding the person who makes everything else make sense. The song came together fast and unexpectedly, written on her dad’s birthday, after a spin of a Raspberries record on vinyl handed her the hook and title in the same instant. Dauson turned the turntable off right there and started writing in the family room of her house, the same place she writes almost everything.
That immediacy carries through the song itself, a tribute to the kind of love that hits like a freight train and never lets up. “You’re just like fresh sugar baby, it’s the sweetest thing I know, your lovin’ drives me crazy, and you electrify my soul,” she sings on the chorus, following a verse that describes the feeling as “harder than the hardest diamond, bigger than torrential rain.” It is unapologetically romantic, the work of an artist who has never been shy about wearing her heart on her sleeve.
Dauson recorded “Fresh Sugar” at Cleveland Sound Lab in Vaughan, Ontario with producer and engineer James Nickle, releasing the single through Frog & Bog Records. She wrote, composed, and sang the song herself, playing rhythm guitar on the track and designing the single artwork, hands on credits that reflect how closely she stays involved in every part of her music.
That range is baked into her sound. Dauson blends rock and roll, rockabilly, surf rock, country, folk and bluegrass into something that resists easy categorization, drawing on influences as varied as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Fats Domino, ELO and Gordon Lightfoot. Her path into music was anything but a straight line. She studied physics and astronomy at York University, worked at the school’s observatory tracking variable stars, and spent time at the David Dunlap Observatory under the guidance of Dr. Tom Bolton, the astronomer credited with discovering the first black hole. Health setbacks eventually pulled her away from that path, and after stints studying creative advertising and video game design, she found her way to a local open mic, where performing her original song “Virtual Sky” and watching the crowd respond before they even knew it was hers changed the direction of her life for good.
Onstage, Dauson leads a full band built for the range her songs demand, with Trenton Moore on drums, Lex Stultz on bass, Blake Little on lead guitar, Darren Armoogam on keyboards, and Kun Huang and Walter Chan rounding out the horn section on saxophone and flute. Fans can catch the live show on October 23 at the El Mocambo Tavern in Toronto.
At the centre of it all is the same instinct that has guided Dauson since that first open mic performance, using music to bring people joy and connection one story at a time. With “Fresh Sugar,” she offers her sweetest and most direct love song yet, proof that the most powerful feelings are often the simplest ones to sing about.
Hi, Katie! Good to meet you! Care to introduce yourself to the readers for those not familiar with your music?
Thank you. I’m a Canadian singer-songwriter from Richmond Hill, Ontario. I currently have eight studio albums and multiple singles available for your listening pleasure. Everything is available in hard copy from my website, katiedauson.ca as well as on all digital services. I’m a multi-genre artist, covering everything from folk to rock and roll, as well as country and rockabilly and blues. When I’m in the recording studio, I only record music that I’ve written, even though I listen to a lot of music in general that’s not mine, obviously, preferably on vinyl.
“Fresh Sugar” apparently came together on your dad’s birthday, after one spin of a Raspberries record handed you the hook and title at the same time. Walk me through that moment. Did you actually stop the record mid-song, or did it play all the way through before you moved?
I was listening to the Raspberries album, Side 3 on vinyl when the title and hook of Fresh Sugar came to me. Quick side note: the vinyl cover is a really cool die cut cover in the shape of a basket of raspberries, and the music on it is just as good. What happened was side B of the record was spinning, and the first song of the side called, I’m a Rocker, which has nothing to do with the way Fresh Sugar sounds. The title, Fresh Sugar just popped into my head, and then I started singing to myself “you’re just like fresh sugar baby, it’s the sweetest thing I know, your lovin’ drives me crazy, and you electrify my soul”. I didn’t stop the record; I let it play through to the end because it’s a great album. But, I did keep singing the hook to myself over and over so I wouldn’t forget it. When the record was finished, I scribbled down those lyrics that I knew would be the hook, then my Dad went out to pick up his birthday dinner, and while he was out, I wrote the song. I didn’t want to initially give any hint that I was going to write a song; I wanted to surprise my Dad with a hopefully, good song.
You wrote this one in the family room of your house, which you’ve said is where you write almost everything. What is it about that specific room that makes it the place where songs actually happen for you?
My turntable and stereo system are in the family room, as well as a coffee table. I think just the idea of having that turntable there helps inspire me to write music in that room. I keep an acoustic guitar nearby too, so that I can write the music for the lyrics of the songs. It really just boils down to being comfortable to spill my guts in music in this room.
You wrote, composed, sang, played rhythm guitar, and even designed the artwork for this single yourself. At what point in your process do you decide something’s finished, when there’s no one else’s voice in the room to weigh in?
I don’t live alone, and I always bounce my music and ideas off my parents as well as my producer, James Nickle, whose opinion I value greatly. He’ll always give me very unbiased reviews of songs when I send them to him. As for the artwork, it’s more of an afterthought, when I’m getting ready to do a release, whether that be for an album, or a single.
Your sound pulls from rock and roll, rockabilly, surf rock, country, folk and bluegrass, with influences ranging from The Beatles to Fats Domino to Gordon Lightfoot. How does a song like “Fresh Sugar” decide which of those influences gets to lead?
All the artists I enjoy listening to may inspire me, but they are not the ones that choose any direction for any specific song for me. I don’t sit there and think about exactly what genre a song is going to be while I’m writing it. It just is what it is. I tend to have a feeling after I’ve written the song and played it a few times on guitar what the final product should sound like, but that comes after the initial writing process.
Upcoming Shows:
October 23, 2026, El Mocambo Tavern, Toronto, Ontario