Amanda Henkel

I’m Amanda Jo Henkel.I was born and raised in Slidell, Louisiana. My dad is a huge country music fan, and when we were little girls, he used to play Willie and Waylon on the guitar and me and my sister Pam would sing along. We loved to sing and we loved country music.Growing up in Slidell, I played soccer and was a cheerleader for my high school. I went to LSU and then SLU and was a cheerleader at both colleges. I always loved music and always wanted to pursue a career as a singer. But, in college, I started modeling and ended up landing a job with Hawaiian Tropic. I won the Miss Hawaiian Tropic International Pageant two times, and worked as their international spokesmodel. I got to travel to many great places and met tons of really nice and interesting people along the way.I also spent some time working for the Louisiana Secretary of State and helped develop the Louisiana Music Cavalcade, which is a showcase of young talent that travels around the state playing at fairs and festivals. I pulled a band together with my sister called "Lil Sis" and we played a bunch of gigs for the Cavalcade under that name. That rekindled my passion for music, and while the modeling paid the bills, my heart always yearned to get back on stage and sing.During Mardi Gras 2006, while working for Hawaiian Tropic at a ball there, I met Cody McCarver and my manager Keith Andrews. They introduced me to Csaba Petocz, a very talented producer who produced Cody’s record “Peace Love and Coondawgs.” With Csaba at the controls, I recorded the four songs on this myspace page at Capital Records Studio B in Hollywood.I get asked a lot of questions about Hurricane Katrina and Slidell. I was living in Slidell at the time the storm hit. The water from the storm surge made it all the way up to the third floor of my parents’ house where I was living. After that, we moved to Springfield where my dad has family. By the summer of 2006, my dad had just about gotten the house ready for us to move back in when the neighbor’s house caught fire and it spread to our house and it burned to the ground. I really felt sorry for my mom after that. Somehow she pulled through, and we recently moved into another house back in Slidell. Things are slowly getting back to normal here.I hope you enjoy the songs on my page. I’ll try to post a little more information about them in the coming weeks!-Amanda