 hen
I first had the mad thought about becoming a performer,
I couldn't have foreseen that I would end up as a singer.
You see I was supposed to be an actress – an
actress, in America …So in hot pursuit of this,
I boarded a plane and headed for the States.
After beginning my acting training, in
the beautiful State of North Carolina, I was offered a
big ole pile of money to continue, on scholarship, in Birmingham,
Alabama. So what could a girl say, but OK? But I was naïve
in those days, I had no idea what was waiting for me. Alabama
was the American south in it's most raw sense; an enormously
complex state with it's traditions and torments pushing
it forward and pulling it back at the same time. I witnessed
Tornadoes, river Baptisms and, I even ate grits for breakfast!
And it was a time when I came to know, love, loss, exhaustion,
fear and triumph. Ah yes… I did a lot of growing
up in Birmingham, Alabama!
And then there was the music. Could I say
I was aware of how this was changing me, changing my life?
I'm not so sure I was. But it is the sounds that were all
around me and the context in which I heard them, that have
stayed and propelled me forward to this point. Where else
could I have heard Billy Holiday's unique voice wafting
from a downtown shoeshine parlour? And I can't remember
how many car journeys to and from my acting classes that
I had Bonnie Raitt as my sole companion. There were woodland
festivals, Bluegrass and fish fries, dark corner bars,
black blues ballads and roadside gospel churches bursting
at the seams with the sound of worship. How could I possibly
fail to be influenced? And how could I possibly fail to
realise that my path was being set for me? But I have been
prone to a degree of emotional blindness in my time!
So with all this now within me, I returned,
unwillingly (initially), to Great Britain – convinced I was born
on the wrong side of the Atlantic and still convinced I
was an actress.
After my return it took quite a number of years before I began to venture into solo singing. The bulk of my concentration went into performing a one-woman theatre show I had written, as well as working on odd TV, film and video projects. So it was more by mistake than by design that I finally began to sing full-time. But once I started I just couldn’t stop, and I felt compelled to look for every opportunity to make a noise.
I had studied music as a child, playing guitar & clarinet and singing in a local county choir, and in addition to some musical theatre work, I had taken private tuition in voice at the Birmingham (Alabama) School of Fine Arts. So I guess I must have thought it would come in handy one day! In Scotland and America I had sung in a variety of bars, and community theatre shows. The group, Missing in Acton, who I joined in 2003, was my first experience of managing a band. It laid the way for what was to come. It’s possible to spend your life thinking you lack the experience you need, but I discovered if you just take that leap, and look to good people for guidance, then you find that every one of us is “just learning”.
So I hope you will enjoy the results of this ongoing journey, where memories of the sounds of the American South come together in nearly all the songs I choose to sing and the music I am compelled to write. |
