Abby Fields

Dreams have a funny way of interfering with reality. Just ask singer/songwriter Abby Fields. The 19-year-old Atlanta artist, who says her music is a conduit for her anger and pain, had a fleeting desire to become a recording artist a few years ago. It wasn’t until she was confronted with a series of life-altering events that she found herself traveling the road that led her back to the dream of her youth.

Abby, who started singing when she was five, grew up listening to and performing contemporary Christian music – mostly at the urging of her mother. Then at the age of 15, a time when most girls turn their thoughts to junior proms and secret crushes, Abby was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, a form of cancer that attacks the lymph nodes. It was then that the floodgates of emotions opened, releasing a rush of feelings that could only emanate from the heart and soul of someone faced with an overwhelming challenge – a challenge rivaled only by an overwhelming drive to fight and win. The result is songs like “Telling the Story” and “Surrender,” true confessions straight from the mouth of Abby Fields. “’Telling the Story’ is my baby,” she says. “It’s the very first song that I ever wrote, the very first song that I ever recorded. I wrote it when I was 15, right after I had finished chemo, right after I changed schools and right after my boyfriend dumped me. I was very angry and I got myself a little notebook and started writing.”

Collaborating with her producer, John Hopkins, Abby created a song of introspection and defiance that is not only emotionally stirring but a real rocked-out head banger as well -- a sharp contrast to the haunting “Surrender,” a slower, more plaintive offering. “I wrote ‘Surrender’ when I was 16. I had a very close friend from Camp Sunshine -- which is a teenage cancer camp -- whose best friend relapsed with a brain tumor and passed away so I tried to write ‘Surrender’ for my friend through his perspective about his friend. That was also right after my grandpa passed away so this song is all about loss. It’s about how it hurts to lose somebody that you care about. The first couple of lines are about losing a person and the next verse is about feeling responsible for that loss, feeling that it’s your fault and learning how to deal with that.”

Since her diagnosis four years ago, Abby Fields has learned to deal with a lot. Not only has she taken on her illness with a vengeance, but she has also mapped out a game plan for the rest of her life. Next up on her agenda: the release of her single, “Telling the Story,” on the Atlanta-based indie, 1720 Entertainment. “After I finished chemo I went to the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of Georgia and Alabama and my wish was to make a professional demo CD and to have my songs recorded. I wanted to do a full CD but it took almost three years to do the three songs we recorded.

Now with two songs recorded and an EP debuting on iTunes, Abby’s recording career is in full bloom. “I’m extremely overwhelmed,” she says. “It doesn’t really seem real….I’m very taken aback. Everyone says I should be more excited because this is the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s not that I’m not excited it’s just that this is a lot and I’m just taking it all in.”

Admittedly, she says, it’s a little unnerving. “Almost everything that I’ve ever written comes from a personal standpoint: songs about family, relationships and my own life experience. And, Abby adds, it generally takes anger and upheaval to get her creative juices flowing. “My writing completely revolves around my settings and my mood and is usually triggered by deep emotion.”

Currently studying biology at Georgia Southern University (her ultimate goal is to become a Pediatric Oncologist), Abby continues to juggle the real world with her dream world and she manages to do it all without compromising her voice or her ambitions. As for making a wish for the outcome of her recording career, Abby says she is hoping for success. “I’d like for it to be big,” she enthuses. “I want it to be huge but not in a way that I feel like I’m a sellout. Music has to be very personal for each person.”

And Abby Fields wouldn’t have it any other way.