A Pop Masterpiece

For Evie Sands, making music is like breathing.

As any Ponderosa Stomp-goer knows, there are certain records that you need enlightened ears to appreciate. Evie Sands’ 1965 nearhit, “Take Me for a Little While,” isn’t one of those. No, this is one of the great romantic outpourings, a performance up there with most of the ’60s pop/soul landmarks you could name.

It’s not the only magical record that Sands made—the Northern soul gem “Picture Me Gone” comes to mind, as does her 1970 version of the country-pop standard “But You Know I Love You;” she’s also got a new EP, Shine For Me, that finds her powers intact. Nor was “Take Me for a Little While” the only time she narrowly missed becoming a household name. But in her view, becoming one was never the point anyway.

“That’s the lingering myth that I want to dispel, that I’m the most unlucky artist in the world. It’s not really fun, and it’s untrue,” she says from her Los Angeles home. “Making music to me is like breathing, and the idea of not doing it would literally be like dying; that’s how much a part of my life it is. So I always found a way to do it—some of it was high-profile, some of it was less in the spotlight. I like to think that I’m in the Alex Chilton world. There’s somebody I really admired, though I never got to meet him. The way he lived his life for the music, he never did it for the superficial reasons, to be popular or meet girls or get famous. He’d get onstage and even turn his back sometimes, but he was there because he loved playing. I like to think I’m the same way.”