Blue Steel Baby

I remember when I was little girl, Saturdays were spent either outside climbing on rooftops, hauling ass through driveways on my bike just to harass the neighborhood dog- or sitting cross legged (and as close as possible because I was blind as a bat) in front of our television to watch old black and white movies. My favorite movies were musicals: a beautiful girl playing an angelic harp while Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dipped and swayed gracefully across the screen. Inevitably I would get yelled at for leaving foot and body tracks on my stepmom's freshly raked shag carpet (Saturdays were cleaning house days). Daddy tried to teach me to play guitar like the rest of the family did, but I was just never quite coordinated enough to do that whole strumming thing, and eventually he gave up. As did I. Instead, I dreamed of playing the harp like an angel. Unfortunately harps were not that easy to come by as the daughter of a honkytonk musician. The closest thing was my grandma's Yamaha upright piano, which I still have to this day. So I started playing the piano when I was 5. We couldn't afford lessons, and no one in my family played piano so I had to each myself to play by ear, which naturally led to writing songs. I started recording my songs on cassette tapes as I grew, and spent most of my school years singing in choirs, and getting turned down for most solo parts. One day my 8th grade choir teacher heard me playing a song I had written during a break in class and suggested I compete for a piano scholarship. I did, and to my surprise, I won. A year later, I competed for an International scholarship and won that as well, but had to give it up when my dad got a great paying gig in Utah. I spent the next years of my life listening to a mix of Top 40 radio and my daddy's 8 track country western music. Most of my work remained on cassette tapes, until five years ago when I decided to follow my passion and write for a career. I wrote "Act of Indecision" on the B3 organ of my church when I was 12 years old. Quite startling when you consider the subject matter, I know. I hope God forgives me my pre-teen sex driven drivel. Of those, "Act of Indecision" was the first song I had professionally recorded in Nashville in 2003, produced by Peter Moon. "Tears Like A River" was the first song I wrote in 2002 and recorded in my engineering class at Saddleback College in 2002 - and it was quite an exciting moment for me as it was the first time in my life I had ever been in a recording studio.I am learning to not look at how far I have to go but how far I have come since then, and that is the reason for this page.At this point, I am proudly guilty of being a singer songwriter who started putting wings on her dreams late in life in order to put her family and life in the balance first. If someone had told me I would be doing this 10 years ago, I would have laughed at them. Madly laughed. Because I would have thought they were mad.But, here I am. Maybe I am the one who is crazy. But I am happy. And I would rather be insanely happy then crazy and miserable.