Bios are kind of
ridiculous. What do they really tell you except things someone wants you to
know? Take mine, for example. On the advice of industry types, I paid
someone to write one up for me. It invokes some beautiful metaphors for
Aoede using a wall, ties my career together seamlessly, and makes me sound,
well, more removed from my art and from you the reader than it does most
anything else.
I was working with a guy from an Artist Management company on
my own artist plan. He said after reading my bio, “I don’t know who you are
and why I should care.” He challenged me to dig deeper. That really struck a
chord with me because I’m all about connecting with you my reader and
listener in ways that make you feel and experience parts of yourself and
hopefully resonate with you who has been there & can say, “yeah, I feel that
too...” Yet I’m not even letting you in on who I am and why I have no choice
but to do what I do.
So I’ve decided to
accept his challenge to dig and be bold and put myself out there. Tell you
things I don’t want you to know. Not what I’ve done, Not why I think you
should drop everything you are doing to come see me perform. Not even why
you should listen to and buy my new album. That’s totally “me-centric.” But
that’s not why I do what I do.
Many have told me it’s my Voice, with a
capital V, that’s unique. The guy who mastered our new album told me he was
immediately struck by my Voice-that it has an authority & command to it
compelling him to listen. Another told me he was hooked from the time I
opened my mouth and just wanted to keep listening. I think it’s just the
mouthpiece to my muse.
Here’s where the
honesty comes in. It’s so much easier to put the pen to paper when it comes
to writing what I have done or even reflecting on others… but it takes
everything I’ve got to look inward and reflect on myself. It’s like that
song on the new album, All I do is scratch the surface.
Only recently did I
discover that one of the main reasons I write is to get up close and
personal with my own skeletons. The guy at the Artist Management company
gave me an exercise that I immediately failed at the first time: writing
down the 10 most traumatic things that had ever happened to me. “Dig a
little deeper,” he said when I quickly assembled and emailed him a list of
only 5 things that I wasn’t afraid to admit and wouldn’t be fired over or
make headlines. He shared his 10 with me as an example. It was then that I
“got it.”
So I dug deep and couldn’t even type my 10 out and email them to
him because I was so ashamed and scared to write them down…I handwrote my
private skeletons, all the repressed, forgotten experiences that I
considered somehow taboo, like how I early on stumbled into sex…I think it’s
only fair to you that if I am billing Aoede as a “muse,” as an indie alt pop
rock band with dark undertones, that I bring my own private darkness to the
page and to the stage.
It’s already started with a new song I’ve written
entitled, “Skeletons.” It took me a lifetime of not dealing with these
skeletons to realize that that song I wrote about you or some seemingly
removed event is actually about me too.
Lastly, maybe I have been put here
for reasons I don’t understand to create-to give You something-maybe after
reading or listening, you experience some part of your own self that you
forgot about. Maybe you are inspired to live life a little more fully or
feel something.
Because if I am doing what I Have to do, I don’t succeed unless I reach
something inside of you. Plain and simple.