July 4 and Other Stuff

I am feeling super grateful for the 235th birthday of out great nation. We look good for our age. My only hope is that we don't start losing our looks. I feel as if day by day the freedoms our Founding Fathers and our military gave their lives, fortunes and sacred honor for are being taken one by one. I don't like that. I want a nation in which I can work hard and have success. It's why I have begun a new job (on top of the bill-paying one), which is recording my music for the masses. And make a decent living at it. My producer has the American entrepreneur spirit by starting Soundwire Records and is trusting me enough to be a partner in this entrepreneurship. And my fellow musicians and producer hope we can finally stop doing what we have to do and actually do what we love to do. I hope to not let the Founders down on this July 4, Independence Day.

This journey I am about to take in making my debut album is an exciting yet scary thing for me. It is exciting in that I am finally going to be using the voice God gave me in the way I have dreamed my whole life in doing. But it also scares me to the core. I am in a process of recovery in my life brought by a life crisis. It's been God's alarm clock if you will to get my life in order. I explore my life, relationships, beliefs and wounds and, with God's help and some friends I have made, try to heal them and grow as a result. I have realized that I have had a lot of stress in my life. And it has found itself wrapping around my voice. So for a while I just stopped singing. Maybe I could eke out a radio singalong or maybe a shower show tune, but mainly I just stopped singing.

So when my producer contacted me out of the blue and asked whether or not I would be on Soundwire, it threw me for a loop. Here I am, someone who hasn't publicly sang in years, and I froze in my spirit. Who would want to hear my voice? Who would care to hear it? And, like a lot of people in my life have intimated, would it even matter? And it hit me. Multiple people in my life had taken it upon themselves to take a knife to my throat and wound my voice. And I just didn't realize this until the Soundwire proposition came to me. Another source of this awakening came when I was watching "Why Not? With Shania Twain" on OWN. A similar thing happened to her. And she worked to find her voice again. Shania has inspired me to find my voice again. And this Soundwire thing is just the place to do it. I am surrounded by people who have known me for a long time and who I can trust with my heart. God has certainly brought this opportunity into my life for such a time as this. I think if this happened anytime sooner I would have different results.

So here I am, putting myself into God's amazing will, not knowing the results yet, but am going to begin another leg of my recovery journey bit by bit. I know you may be asking what this has to do with anything. I say this to you: In order to know the music as the art, you must go behind the scenes of the heart. The music is the tip of the iceberg.

So buckle your seat belts, audience. This will be a ride you won't soon forget!

Testing...1, 2, 3!

This is only a test. Had this been an actual blog entry I would have said a lot more. Once again, this is only a test.