003: Serendipitous Sounds

A love story that turned us into band mates

Hello everyone, I feel like I need to circle back and write an updated diary entry rambling about my life lately more in-depth for sure. It has been a little bit, I took a tiny break from writing posts to focus my energy on my book since I am so close to finishing my first draft! I have an aggressive goal to get it mostly written by the end of the year so I might be more sporadic in this space, but just know I am so thankful for you all and appreciate you reading about my personal stories so much.  

Enjoy this story of how Chas and I formed a band and recorded our first EP…

Part one of the love story can be found here! 

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Picking right back into the part where Chas asked me to be in a band with him, the two of us being the main writers and faces of the band– under his last name. I thought he was a little bit crazy, but I had always imagined singing on stage someday. It felt like a childhood dream coming true, it felt a little bit like destiny. 

Rewind to my middle school years, my grandpa was a music teacher. He taught kids from elementary to high school. He was a very proficient pianist though I never heard him play. I don’t have a lot of memories with him since we didn’t live near them and we weren’t very close. He was diagnosed with cancer and had come to stay with us for chemo and radiation treatments at one point. One of the memories I do have is hearing about his piano playing for cancer patients at the appointments my dad would take him to. The hospital where he was receiving treatment had a grand piano in its lobby and my grandpa would sit and play before they would leave, lots of people would gather to watch him. The other memory is of sitting with him when he was very sick and we knew he wasn’t going to be with us much longer. He told me and my younger brother to come over and he handed us each a guitar case with his acoustic guitars, one for each of us. He told us to use the musical gifts we had been given and to always lean on music. He also said that we would both be really great musicians if we tried. My brother went on to learn guitar and he absolutely shreds now. I went on to be in a band that I know my grandpa would be so proud of if he were here to see it. I also think he would have loved Chas if they had met, since he started his music journey through piano. 

Fast forward to Chas and I writing and wanting to record our first EP. We would sit for hours with his tiny micro Korg synth and electric guitar, writing song ideas and taking breaks to swim in his roommate’s pool. It was my first time exercising my songwriting brain like that, helping Chas think of lyrics and melodies. We settled on five to six songs with a strong first single to record that we thought were good enough after months of writing over the summer.

We decided to ask friends and family to crowdfund our EP so we could record with our friend at a professional local music studio. We raised all of the money in 3 months and asked some of our pals who are amazing musicians to record with us. We had our five songs to work on with a single to go first and planned out a week to hit the studio where we spent basically morning to late late night recording. I have some of the funniest memories from that experience, all of us slightly crazed and delirious, heavily caffeinated in the cave-like studio. It was my first experience recording in a booth, I remember feeling so strange hearing my voice through over-the-ear headphones, the smell of incense burning transcendent. It was my first experience writing something on the spot, adding ad-libs, and pushing my voice to the highest notes I could sing in my range. It was my first experience trusting a producer and Chas to know what direction to go.

We waited as the songs were mixed and were blown away by how amazing the songs sounded, stamping approval on them when they were just right and sent off to be mastered. We went to an old laundromat and shot promo photos to post on our new band's Instagram with our buddy Alex, our first biggest fan and manager (arguably the band wouldn’t have happened without him). Then we planned the big release show.

We approached the venue coordinator with Alex as our manager, and pitched a show to them. They were skeptical when we described the music since they were used to singer-songwriters with an acoustic only at this venue, they didn’t even have a stage since it was not a music venue at all. It was more so known for its courtyard, beignets or coffee, giftshop, and antique sitting area in the warehouse exposed brick style building but we had the vision to make it a packed-out show. We had the date all set, we printed fliers and posted them all over our school. The night of the show, we confirmed at least forty people would be there everyone that knew us personally, our families even traveled to be there, so we figured it would be pretty small. 

We set everything up and left to get food before the show. Then we come back an hour before we start and there is parking literally nowhere, so we get nervous that maybe people won’t be able to park anywhere for the show. As time goes on the venue is more and more packed out, we can’t see how many people are there since we hung out behind the venue as our “green room” during the opener, but we can hear how loud it is and the energy is electrifying. We head into the venue after the opener plays (Bela Pierce, we love you) and we see that the room is not just packed, people are spilling out into the courtyard and that it is full to the brim with people as well. We were breaking fire code for sure, we absolutely could not have anticipated a show of this size. So many people believed in us and helped us put everything together, it was so cool to see that pay off.

That first show gave us a taste of how music brings so many people together to dance and have fun which breeds community and a moment of unifying energy, which became our mission basically. I noticed how comfortable I was performing with Chas by my side and that my years of dancing ballet recitals prepped me to being in front of people dancing, the only thing that was new was my voice projecting alongside that.   

I was addicted, I knew we would keep making music even if it absolutely sucked and no one liked it because we loved it, we believed in it and the experience of making it was so much fun. We carried that attitude (still do) with us into our decision to move to Nashville. More on that journey in the next one! 

Thank you for reading as I reminisce on the journey of music in my life to now. A little music memoir!