Tucson-born singer-songwriter having greatest years of her musical life

It’s more like new beginnings, second chances and pinch-myself-I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening kinda full circle.

In June, Zlaket will release “Dance Again,” her fourth recording and the first on a record label.

In a lead-up to the release, Meridian, an imprint of ECR Music Group, remastered and reissued her indie catalog.

“So many people had never heard those albums because unless you had a CD in your hand from one of my shows, you didn’t have one,” said the Tucson native and long-time California resident, who is bringing her band home for a show at La Rosa on Sunday, April 19.

“For me, that was so wonderful, like a rebirth. All this music that I'd had all these years and wanted to share and finally got to in the right way. … People from all over the world are hearing my music for the first time, which I never could have done on my own."

Her musical rebirth started in spring 2024 with Denny Tedesco’s documentary “The Immediate Family.”

Zlaket, who had moved from San Diego to the tiny northern California town of Auburn during the pandemic, had been putting off watching the film about the celebrated 1970s L.A. session musicians Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, Russ Kunkel and Waddy Wachtel credited with defining the “California sound.” She knew herself; she would love the film — “It blew me away,” she said — and she would go down digital rabbit holes to learn more.

That’s when she stumbled on Sklar’s Facebook page.

She messaged him some classic fan-girling about his work and its impression on her as a young musician in the late 1980s, early ’90s, and she thanked him.

She never expected him to read the message, much less respond.

What happened 30 minutes later literally turned her life around.

“He wrote back and he said, ‘I read everything. Thank you so much’,” she said. “The door was open and I wasn't going to let it close.”

She kept the conversation going and sent him an MP3 of a song she had written and recorded on her piano.

“He said, ‘I'd love to work on this with you’,” Zlaket recalled. “I thought, well, I'm not going into the studio to do one song with Lee Sklar. And so I literally decided I think I'm going to make another album.”

Everything from that point on kinda fell into place, from rounding up the musicians, including Sklar, to recording the album of original songs that Zlaket describes as vintage pop.

“It's got a lot of influence from I’d say Motown, very soulful. There's one blues song on there that's an older song of mine that we revamped with a full horn section,” she explained, adding that her music has been described as pop, soft rock, folk and alternative.

“I think it's just reminiscent of a lot of the music that I grew up listening to,” she said. “That's what it feels like to me.”

Meridian has released three singles from the album, including “Second Chance At Love,” a song inspired by Zlaket’s volunteer work with a local animal shelter. The song is told from the dog’s perspective.

Zlaket wrote all except one of the songs on “Dance Again.” The lone cover is of Karla Bonoff’s ballad “Someone to Lay Down Beside Me” that fellow Tucsonan Linda Ronstadt had a hit off in the 1970s.

Zlaket, who graduated from Salpointe Catholic High School in 1987 and moved to L.A. to study theater at USC, was 20 years into her music career when she went to law school in 2006. She was restless, she recalled, and wanted to find something meaningful to do.

She went on to practice personal injury law for 15 years in SoCal, eventually teaming up with her father, the former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Zlaket. But music was never out of the picture; she practiced law during the day and devoted her nights to singing until the pandemic hit, and she couldn't really do either.

During the pandemic, she and her longtime partner Joe moved across the state. She tried to book a few shows in Auburn, but didn't have a lot of luck. 

And then she started talking to Sklar, and all the other pieces started to fall into place.

"To me, you take chances, and I think the older you get, you figure, what do I have to lose," she said. "I'm going to take the chance and let's see where it goes. The last couple years have been the greatest years in my life as a musician."

Zlaket's show Sunday at La Rosa, 800 N. Country Club Road, starts at 4 p.m. Tucson singer-songwriter Jillian Bessett will open. Tickets start at $32.73 through larosa.org.