“I'm a songwriter. I'd be happy to talk with you and your audience about music, creativity, and life in general.”
At 50, I decided to stop being a musician in secret. I hope to inspire people to take a chance on creativity. Yes, I'd been in punk bands in college and there's a piano in my house, but I hadn't called myself a musician in maybe ever. Songs kept writing themselves in my head.
Randomly, I was running some usual errands - I was at Walmart to tell the truth - when I spotted this flame-haired woman clutching a guitar. What the heck was she doing at Walmart, with a guitar? It was uncanny because she looked exactly like how my songs sounded in my head. So I had to ask where she was heading with that guitar, and she was going to a music studio I'd never noticed before.
Turns out that her teacher is this brilliant multi-instrumentalist, dad and advocate of special needs citizens- Dave Hardman. He has this just incredible community music academy and studio that's been going strong -quietly - on top of a Walmart in suburban Charlotte for many years.
I spend my days running a commercial roofing business and know that my chances of running into wildly talented musicians is super limited, so I just popped the question there. I said, y'all I've got these songs that have been bouncing around in my head for years and I have got to go out on a limb and ask if we can play them together.
So, that was two years ago and we dove right into putting this album together. We almost lost Dave to Covid. It was awful. He was in the hospital in the ICU fighting for his life. Thankfully he pulled through. Putting out this album has been a rollercoaster ride. I don't know what will come of it, but I'm just happy I took this risk. I hope other people who've maybe been sitting on the fence with their creative dreams will decide to jump into it like I did.
