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W hen singer-songwriter Stephanie Heaghney agreed to meet up to chat about her music career, I pre-

pared myself to be as awestruck and hypnotized as I was during her recent performance with the brand-new Burlington neo-soul outfit JUPTR. The juicy, synth-heavy five-piece — essen-tially a rebirth and reimagining of the defunct soul-hop outfit Smooth Antics — revealed its burgeoning repertoire to a rambunctious, drunken crowd during Halloween weekend. But not even beer-spilling yahoos and the cacophony of their incessant chatter — or, frankly, her powerhouse bandmates dressed in cult-ish hooded robes — could detract from Heaghney’s palpable stage presence. In that moment, she eclipsed all peripheral sensory information.

But the genial, disarming woman seated next to me at a watering hole in Burlington’s South End seemed like a different person. Dressed in fashion-forward garb — albeit much more conventional than the glamorous en-semble she wore the last time I saw her — Heaghney sipped a pink cocktail and smiled warmly, her divergent curls par-tially obscuring large, gold earrings. Just as quickly as she once hypnotized me, she put me at ease. Chatting with her felt like reconnecting with an old friend — a stark contrast to the mythic, unknow-able entity that is her stage persona.

“Effect achieved,” Heaghney said cheekily. “I feel like it’s almost my true self onstage. I’m a better communica-tor. I’m more relaxed and open. It feels really good.”

Aside from fronting JUPTR, she’s a vocalist, songwriter and flutist in the 10-piece soul orchestra smalltalker and recently lent her talents to recordings by two of the Queen City’s most notewor-thy electronic and hip-hop producers, SnakeFoot and Loupo. Given her grow-ing ubiquity in local projects that push the boundaries of soul and hip-hop,

you’d never guess that Heaghney, 34, is relatively new to the spotlight.

Onstage, the Burlingtonian musi-cian exudes as much confidence and experience as someone who’s been at the center of attention for decades. As she stakes her claim as one of the city’s go-to collaborators, she’s inching closer to finding the balance between mystique and earnestness.

“It’s a risk,” Heaghney said. “I guess that’s the hard part about sharing music. Sometimes I can definitely clam up a bit. [But] there’s also a part of me that wants to open up.”

Heaghney grew up in a large, musi-cally inclined family in the unincorpo-rated village of Beebe Plain in Orleans County. She recalls early influences such as Earth, Wind & Fire, the soundtrack to the Diana Ross musical The Wiz, and jazz singer Sarah Vaughan — all played on vinyl.

“If you’ve never skipped a record from dancing around too hard, you haven’t lived,” she said.

Since graduating from North Country Union High School in 2000, Heaghney has taken the scenic route in life —  lit-erally. The world traveler has visited

locales including Turkey, Scotland and Ecuador, often with her husband of 11 years, Tim Heaghney, who co-owns Cold Hollow Contracting. When she’s not pursuing music or globe-trotting, the singer works as a hairstylist and dabbles in modeling.

Heaghney’s trajectory toward the limelight has been slow and steady. Aside from a short-lived high school band called Main Squeeze, which she describes as a late-1990s cross-section of ska, Jamiroquai funk and Radiohead-esque obliqueness, her career in music and performance began in the world-infused hip-hop group ONEoverZERO and the Spielpalast Cabaret.

Then came Smooth Antics, which debuted in 2014 with a monthlong Nectar’s residency alongside electro-pop expats argonaut&wasp. That was when Heaghney began to hone her writ-ing chops.

“When you’re performing as lead vo-calist, you [become] the communicator between the audience and the band,” she noted. But she admitted that opening the lines of communication can sometimes be daunting and a little uncomfortable.

“The earlier Smooth Antics [music] was safer, to avoid that type of feeling,” she explained, adding that she’s recently begun “giving a little bit more” of her-self in her writing. “Part of my trick is reminding myself that we all have those insecurities.”

The music on Smooth Antics, the group’s only album, is hardly fluff. But you can hear what Heaghney means by “safer.” For instance, she keeps things light and breezy on the titillating “Laced With Lust.” But she also touches on some heavier subjects, such as systemic economic injustice, on “Change.” From track to track, she oscillates between safety and full-blown exposure.

Around the time Smooth Antics dis-solved in late 2016, Heaghney joined

TOTAL ECLIPSE » P.70

music

Total EclipseExamining singer-songwriter

Stephanie Heaghney’s mystery and magnetismBY JORDAN ADAMS

Stephanie Heaghney

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