But growing up in the suburbs of Long Island and Connecticut was not where I wanted to be so I escaped to Greenwich Village in New York City to attend Parsons School of Design after graduating high school. While I was there studying communications, every aspect of life became an inspiration to me and helped me to become the person I am. Just the art of living in the city is an experience. So even the mundane food shopping or walking to work introduced me to a wide array of crazy characters and situations, all of which left some sort of imprint in my brain for later processing and analysis.
It was during this period that I first started playing the guitar and writing. Unfortunately it was a classical acoustic guitar, which I found very difficult to play, so I didn't get too far before I kept getting frustrated by my lack of progress. At that time though, my main focus was school and the visual arts, so I just played around on the guitar mostly during my school breaks for fun. Full time school with 2 part time jobs doesn't leave much time for "fun". (But it does teach you a great work ethic not to mention a lot about time management and surviving on little to no sleep.)
After I graduated Parsons I did a little traveling and landed in the city of Chicago, where I spent the next 14 years. It was there, in 1992 with a birthday gift of an electric guitar, that music really clicked as something I wanted to try. (Something about that damn feedback) So with much practicing and writing I started playing out in the bars and small clubs around the city and did so for many years. But in life, changes happen and the journey you're on gets detoured to another and the only course of action is to "roll with it". (a daily mantra) So for about a decade, I switched gears and concentrated more on my visual art and the art of writing about my journey and its detour. When I left Chicago in 2006, I had a stack of lyrics and a burning desire to finally make music again.
Tired of the city and not really knowing where I wanted to go, I had the opportunity to move to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, nestled between the corn, wheat and soybean fields. There are no busses, car horns, trains, traffic or Thai food but there are hundreds of stars in the sky at night and all the space I need to plug in and scare the wildlife with that wonderful feedback noise. It was here that WarAlarm was created.
I wrote, played, programmed, engineered, produced, edited, mixed, designed and financed the effort. A complete DIY production with the punk attitude from my youth. Created on GarageBand in the basement. A true independent voice from the undercurrents of truth that floated down the Chesapeake Bay from DC.
If you can accept truth…give it a listen. I'm sure you'll agree.
"Theresa sings powerful spontaneous scripture songs and takes you into high worship" - www.greatindie.com
"That's smart politics!" - myspace.cn - Girls Rock Best !
Trigger video
contemplation video