Katie Dauson Releases Country Rock Love Ballad FRESH SUGAR
The single was recorded with producer James Nickle and released through Frog & Bog Records.
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.
Shows
October 23, 2026, El Mocambo Tavern, Toronto, Ontario
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