My father was an incredible musician who could play almost anything including the saw! It was this introduction to music that, I'm sure, fuelled my own desire to be a musician. Sadly, my father died in 1987 through being infected with HIV through a blood transfusion (See the Inquiry here). I must say that I found a vast amount of healing through music and my dad is still a great inspiration for my creativity.
Through school, I enjoyed learning and playing music. Traditional recorder, drums and orchestral percussion, guitar, brass, classical and folk vocals. I started writing songs around 10-11 years old. This continued through high school and into university. During the 2000s I focused more on gospel songs and had 3 songs cut by other artists during that time.
Song writing remained a hobby until 2020 when lockdown changed the world. During this time I looked for something to occupy my time. I had tried art and although I enjoyed it, it wasn't fulfilling. I decided to return to song writing and wrote a song called "The Church House was Empty (but so was the tomb)", as it was leading up to the resurrection weekend celebrations but everyone was going to be home. It was really popular and helped a lot of people through that difficult time. I attempted to get in to 'the business' of gospel song writing but found many doors shut for one reason or another.
This led me to take some song writing coaching to help develop my skills even further. From there, I took production classes and joined a Mastermind class which really catapulted my production and music business skills. It opened up more opportunities to work with amazing people and gain much more experience. The next step was vocal coaching and after 2 years, even took classes to become a vocal coach myself.
After winning several awards for my songs, I tried to enter the world of commercial gospel songs but there was no interest so I turned my attention to writing and pitching songs for film and TV (I still write gospel songs but just for our church). I have been privileged to have had a bunch of tracks used for Sync licencing (independent films, PBS, ITV); have won several song writing awards, and will be appearing on ITV's The Voice UK 2nd Dec 2023).
In Apr 2023, as part of my vocal coaching homework, I was to do a mimicking exercise of an artist that we greatly admired. I chose to do Johnny Cash but decided not to do a CASH cover, but Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio. At the point of writing it has been viewed around 2.5Million times over various platforms, had country radio and press attention and tens of thousands of shares. It was a game changer for me. It has spurred me on to really produce quality music for my fans and followers.
I look forward to the next stage!