Aba A Luke

So­ca sweet­heart Na­dia Bat­son launched her all-fe­male so­ca band last week Wednes­day evening in Trinidad to the me­dia.The launch was held at The An­chor­age in Ch­aguara­mas and Bat­son got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to breathe af­ter months of an­tic­i­pa­tion.

She showed off her front­line women Ter­ry Lyons and 21-year-old Megan Wal­drond and showed that SASS would be just what's need­ed in the grow­ing so­ca in­dus­try.Bat­son said she planned on show­cas­ing that tal­ent­ed women in the Caribbean can rock any stage around the world and start­ing with Car­ni­val 2012, the woman who has giv­en us count­less hits, some per­son­al­ly sung and oth­ers mere­ly com­posed, wants to prove her point.

Wal­drond is ready to make waves across T&T. The is­land's newest so­ca sweet­heart is not on­ly mak­ing an im­pres­sion with her lat­est sin­gle ahead of C2K12, but she's al­so gain­ing quite a bit of recog­ni­tion af­ter news sur­faced that she would be a part of SASS.One day pri­or to the of­fi­cial launch of SASS, Wal­drond told the T&T Guardian that she was ec­sta­t­ic to be a part of the new band.

High­light­ing that band­leader Na­dia Bat­son's vi­sion was one that was shared and ap­pre­ci­at­ed with­in the cir­cle of beau­ti­ful and tal­ent­ed young women, Wal­drond said she was look­ing for­ward to an ex­cit­ing sea­son. In­de­pen­dent­ly, she re­cent­ly re­leased a sin­gle called Push Back, which she said was writ­ten by Ja­son "Shaft" Bish­op and pro­duced by G Mas­ter, both of whom worked on the singer's 2011 sin­gle, Posse.

Ex­plain­ing that the sin­gle was one of four tracks that would be re­leased for 2012, the Barataria res­i­dent proud­ly high­light­ed that her songs were al­ready be­ing re­hearsed by SASS to form part of the band's reper­toire."My aim is to re­al­ly bring good mu­sic and per­form it well and have fun," Wal­drond ex­claimed in a tone sym­bol­ic of a young, bub­bly fe­male.

Her on-stage per­sona has al­ways been quite dif­fer­ent from the Wal­drond who sits to be in­ter­viewed. On stage, she is known for pow­er­ful­ly ex­e­cut­ing from her depths, but dur­ing our in­ter­view, she coy­ly an­swered to on­ly those ques­tions asked.De­spite this be­ing her sec­ond year on the main­stream so­ca mar­ket, Wal­drond has been far­ing quite well in the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try for some time. Her ac­com­plish­ments in­clude win­ning the Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion twice, be­ing crowned the Coun­try West­ern cham­pi­on of the world in 2008 in Los An­ge­les, and in 2010 qual­i­fy­ing for the fi­nal round of the Syn­er­gy So­ca Star com­pe­ti­tion here in T&T.

Wal­drond said her 2011 en­try in­to the semi­fi­nal round of the Groovy So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion was an ac­com­plish­ment that filled her with pride.Now with an even big­ger plat­form on which to ex­e­cute her vo­cal range and abil­i­ty, Wal­drond is let­ting it be known that she's com­ing hard. As fel­low lead vo­cal­ist of SASS, there's tremen­dous an­tic­i­pa­tion in the air as every­one lis­tens in to hear the sassi­ness she's ex­pect­ed to bring.

The launch had all the movers, shak­ers and heavy­rollers in lo­cal show­biz in at­ten­dance.