By Nanette Light
entertainment editor
Kate Leary likes to joke that Taylor Swift is slowly crushing her dreams.
And when she read online about the country music star and John Mayer recording a duet, she had to walk away.
"I was like, 'that's it,'" she said, putting down her cappuccino from Michelangelo's on West Main Street and raising her hands to surrender.
But squashing her jealousy of Swift may have gotten easier. The 22-year-old recent graduate of the University of Oklahoma has last week's launch of her first album to distract her from news feeds about Swift.
And she'll probably agree that her debut on the music scene is more quenching than today's second installment of the Twilight Saga, "New Moon," which Leary, who's usually bent on non-fiction reads like the coffee table book on log cabins she perused in the cafe, sheepishly admits she's giddy for in anticipation.
"I would tell my roommates I was going to bed, and then they would see the light coming through the crack under my door," said Leary.
In her musical premiere, "Can't Stop Dreaming," Leary, who grew up listening to classic rock like The Eagles with her dad and has a guilty pleasure for red dirt country music, puts music to her poetry as she sings of love and the unknown, mingling country, pop and acoustic rock genres in songs she wrote herself with the guidance of her producer, Charlie Rayl, a Norman namesake on the music scene.
"I'm an honest writer, names not included of course," said the musician, who rarely stopped smiling, between sips. "But if you put a mic in front of my face, it's inner monologue and never censored, so the names come out eventually."
As she holds the CD in her hand, she said the hardest part -- promoting and marketing her tunes on the music radar -- has just begun, which she admits is scary.
"Because it can go on forever. There's a lot of unknowns and a lot of question marks," said Leary, who's always a believer in luck, but said she wants to be prepared when it knocks, explaining that luck is when preparation intersects opportunity.
While Leary has attracted attention on the music scene in Nashville, the Dallas native opted to record her album in Norman, laying down her tracks at Studio 115 Recording, 115 Hal Muldrow Drive, and waitressing at Blu Fine Wine and Food between recording and writing her music.
She doesn't doubt the quality recording a CD in Nashville would produce, but said she preferred the organic sound of the Norman studio, which didn't include a pitch corrector.
"I like it that way. It's real," said Leary, who admits her coffee shop sound has been criticized for its ability to project, adding that she could never do a Celine Dion karaoke song justice.
"You have to be able to take some of it in stride and think, 'what can I do to make this better?'" she said.
While a move to Nashville has always been in the back of her mind, it begs the quandary of a little fish in a big pond versus a big fish in a small pond. So Leary said a move to Dallas or Austin within the next year is more likely.
Like she said before, it's all about being prepared -- or at least pulling off a convincing performance.
"I'm learning to fake it until I make it," she said. "Nashville is a town where you have one chance to make a statement, and I'm going to make one hell of a mark."
