Well, let's see...I was born in Calgary, Alberta many moons ago. We moved around a lot when I was a child. That had a detrimental effect on me - with each successive move I became more shy and found it harder to make friends. I wasn't a complete loner, but I was painfully shy. An inarticulate teenager with fuzzy blond hair, funny-looking features and a never-ending parade of acne across my face, I kept my head down and my shoulders hunched. Talking with strangers was hard enough, the idea of singing to them never even occurred to me.

My mother was physically stunning (and still is - at 77 years of age!) She was gifted with many talents - perfect pitch, a beautiful, four-octave singing voice, the ability to sit down at a piano and play any song. She probably would have been a musical prodigy if any of the adults around her had been a little more attentive. I was not born with such gifts. I was completely tone-deaf as a young child. I might have stayed that way if my mother hadn't put me in piano lessons. I finally developed the ability to hit the right notes, and I loved to sing, but I always felt my mother was the one with the voice. So I would only sing when I was all by myself. Or in a choir with other people.

Somewhere along the line, inexplicably, the acting bug hit me. I was cast in my first play in high school. I kept expecting to feel absolute terror on opening night, but to my surprise (shock, really), the terror never came. Instead, I enjoyed every single moment of being on stage. Especially curtain call - what a rush! Music hadn't called to me...just yet.

During my last year of high school, my best friend and I started singing together. One day, out of nowhere, she started singing 'Tonight You Belong to Me'. She had heard Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters sing it in the movie 'The Jerk'. I knew the song well. It was one of the many old songs I came to know and love when my mother's beautiful voice would fill our home. I started singing along with my friend and discovered something that changed everything: I love to harmonize. I mean, I LOVE to harmonize. It's like an addiction, only a healthy one. And there was something about the way that our voices merged. It felt magical and beautiful, like a high without the drugs. It felt like I had come home. She and I sang so much during that year and the years that followed. Still, acting remained my first love.

When I was 19 I decided I should try writing some songs myself, instead of just singing other people's songs. So I sat down at my piano and started fiddling around. I grabbed a pencil and paper and started writing. The melody came to me quickly, the lyrics took a couple of weeks. I was pretty darned excited when I had finished. My song was called 'Brick Wall'. It was about how it felt to be falling apart inside and having nobody notice. I know that might sound profound, but there was a serious problem: My song sucked. Badly. Oh so badly. So badly in fact, that if I was to sing it for you, you would politely say 'It's not that bad!' and then sneak off to the bathroom, lock yourself in, and howl with laughter. Your eyes would tear up. And you would be in the bathroom a long time before you were finally able to control yourself and come out. That's how bad that song was.

I’d like to think that my song writing has changed (for the better!) throughout the years. One thing that hasn’t changed though, is the need to write something with meaning. I’ve never felt a desire to write loves songs (not to say that I won’t some day). I like to write (need to write) about what makes me feel: anger, frustration, curiosity, grief, optimism, disillusionment. It matters to me to write about what matters to me. It’s like a type of therapy…it’s a way to work through what I feel. The ‘songwriter’ part of ‘singer/songwriter’ has fed me, nourished me, and blessed me. I can always count on it…I have faith and confidence in it. Writing makes me feel loved and cared for, even when it’s difficult.

What has tripped me up though, is the ‘singer’ part of ‘singer/songwriter’. I never really wanted to sing. Aside from harmonizing, singing in front of people really kinda sucked. I hated it. I don’t know how I could act in front of an audience of 500 people and not feel nervous, yet not be able to sing in front of a handful of people without feeling extraordinarily sick to my stomach. (Literally.) No matter how often I performed, even with other people up on stage with me, I was utterly terrified. And the longer I stayed on stage, the worse it would become. (Even though everyone told me it should be the other way around.) I could go on for another nine or ten paragraphs about stage fright, but I think I’ll save that for another time.

As hard as it was to sing, I loved singing with my friend. People told us that it was magic to hear our voices together, and it really felt that way. But as scared as I was of singing, she was even more terrified. One day she told me she was done and that she didn’t want to sing with me anymore. Ever. Not even just by ourselves. That broke me a little. It hurt me in a way I can’t really express, and that pain still lingers today.

When she told me this, it was like a punch to the gut. I remember feeling so full of grief…I went home and sat on my partner’s lap and buried my head in his shoulder. I just sat there and sobbed…and sobbed…and sobbed. Even now, it’s still painful to think about. My counselor later told me that there will be something else that I’ll discover that will fulfill me. Not in the exact same way, but that it would bring me a different type of fulfillment. That sorta happened and sorta didn’t. I discovered a brand new creative outlet: screenwriting. I absolutely loved it! But as much as I loved it, it never quite reached that feeling of ‘magic’ that I had singing with my friend. I still miss it. I still miss her. It still hurts.

So I kinda took a step back from music. I’d still attend songwriting and performance classes. And I still wrote music. But I stopped actively performing. Without my friend, singing just didn’t have the same meaning.

Fast forward many years. As a mother of a young toddler, I felt compelled to get back to music somehow. I guess part of me didn’t want to leave all my songs on little pieces of paper stuffed in a drawer. (The little music graveyard in my desk.) I wanted to bring those songs to life again. Good fortune brought me to Ryan Worsley of Echoplant Sound and we worked on my song ‘The Alchemists’ together. After that, we worked on more of my music over a period of a few years. (I tend to do things very slowly.) Working on the album was an incredible challenge. It was so hard! I’m not much of a singer or musician, so I would sing my songs to Ryan, strumming along on my little Larrivée (named Koa), and we would discuss how I would like each song to sound and we would get to work. And by ‘we’ I mean mostly Ryan. See, Ryan is part magician – I would not have the beautiful album I now have if it wasn’t for his immense talent. But what I found incredibly difficult was recording the vocals – it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Ryan would look at me and scratch his head. ‘You’re singing flat.’ (No way!) ‘You’re not singing on the beat.’ (No way!) ‘Can you do anything about that vibrato?’ (No way…um, maybe…no way!)

‘Do I really sound like that?’ Yes! Somehow, during the previous few years, I must have stumbled partway back to my tone-deaf beginnings. And that wasn’t easy to accept. At home, I would be practicing my vocals and my nephew would tell me ‘You’re flat.’ What? Really? I couldn’t even hear it. (I think that’s due to an ear infection I had after my pregnancy. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.) So I would actually spend about twenty hours a week practicing the vocals to one song. Then I would go into the studio on Saturday nights and Ryan’s assistant Matt would record my vocals…and I’d still be flat!!! Argh! He spent just about as much time auto-tuning my voice as he did recording it. (Why I am sharing this?) The really strange thing was, when I recorded my harmonies, I was spot-on. (Not that I could tell, the guys had to let me know.) On occasion, I would record vocals with Ryan and I remember him telling me ‘You are nailing these harmonies.’ I felt really good about that, although is it kinda funny to have someone look at you in shock and amazement and basically say ‘I can’t believe it! You’re actually hitting the right notes!’

So here I am, finally with an album with my own songs. It feels so good to have it completed. And I truly hope, more than anything else, that people will really relate to my music. I hope it will make them feel something. I hope it will move them. For those of you who are still reading, I thank you so much for your interest.