Toronto has a new queen of rock, and that is SATE. Bringing together a mixture of blues, funk and rock, SATE is a powerhouse that can not be missed. Coming off of a Sunday residency for April at the Dakota Tavern, she has released the video for her amazing hit “Warrior”.

This song will get stuck in your head, and the chorus is a foreboding for the next year, where she chants “You’re gonna know my name!!!”

Earlier this week, I sat down with SATE to talk about musical influences and what the year looks like for her:

Who are your major musical influences?

Quite briefly, I grew up in a musical family so my family would be my first influence. Then Tina Turner, Jimi Hendrix, I just recently got into Black Sabbath, Jack White; I love his Dead Weather stuff, who else? Fishbone, Living Colour, Queens of the Stone Age, Band of Skulls, yeah.

Nice, so like a wide range of different genres and artists.

Yeah, like that’s the stuff that I’ll go back to all the time. There’s other stuff, there’s soul stuff, straigh-ahead jazz, there’s classical. I will listen to a lot of stuff, but what really gets me moving is like THAT kind of stuff.

How did you get into music, but as you said, growing up in a music family.

Yeah, family.

Was it always listening to that rock stuff from an early age, or progressively get into that?

I would say it progressively got into that, but the first time I ever heard, like another influence is Funkadelic , when I first heard Funkadelic I was like “Fuck, this shit rocks”. And then later on, another influence is Betty Davis, and when I heard her, I was like “Ok, THIS is what I want to do, THAT’S what I want to do.” She is IT, you know? She encompasses everything; there is soul in there, but there’s this edge and this funk, there’s rock, there’s a grittyness that’s sexy and sensual and that’s what I stand for.

One thing I noticed was that you don’t even strain to hit some of the notes, it just comes with ease to you. Have you had training?

I’ve had a little bit of training, but again, family. But I went to a school for the arts, Claude Watson, up in North York. There was a little bit of classical, choir, but it was just singing all my life.

So you have three EPs, Red, Black and Blue, you have released them through Pledge, and you’re trying to figure out what is going to go on your debut CD. Once you’ve decided, were you going to rerecord the songs?

No, no no no.

Just take them from the EPs and release them?

Yes, no rerecording. Put so much blood, sweat and tears into that shit, it’s final. It’s not a demo, that was it going in, but there’s eighteen songs, there’s six songs on each EPs, so it’s coming down to ten. And it’s going to be HARD to come down to ten.

An artist I talked to last year, Courtney Barnett from Australia, her first album was called The Double EP, where she had two EPs and re-released them as one whole package. Had you thought of doing a compilation debut?

Totally thought about just putting those EPs out there. As their own releases. And I still might.

So you have your Painted Lady show coming up on May 6th, and also TURF so that’s really cool.

I’m so excited!! Fishbone is performing!!!

Your stage presence is amazing and your interaction with the band, it’s very rare to see a performer interact that much with their band.

I love them, I love my dudes. Kirk is killer on the guitar and you heard him sing. He’s fantastic. And Wade is fucking amazing. I’m surrounded by mother fuckers.

And you brought your friend up on stage.

Yeah, I brought up Hill, she was in a previous incarnation of a band that I had, but she’s also got her Hill and the Sky Heroes. I’ve collaborated with her and written stuff, and she has collaborated with me and written stuff. So we’ve got a collective of sorts going on. Not really official, but we are all bad-ass chicks that are of a feather, flock together.

Check back in later next week for the rest of the interview and a review of her CMW show on May 6th at the Painted Lady.