So I am a musician - singer/songwriter, altho what would describe me better is a songwriter/singer. Here are the facts:
1. 3 years old + Wizard of Oz + Judy Garland + Over the Rainbow = obsession with music.
2. I started playing piano at a very early age. That is when my parents bought me a little casio keyboard. I remember I figured out how to play Van Halen's "Love Comes Walkin' In" and thought that I was a rock star. I played by ear for a long time, then started taking lessons.
3. My parents decided I needed the real thing, enter my best pal, Everett, the piano. This piano was built especially for me - special pedal, easier to press keys. I will never give him up!
4. After a couple of different teachers and realizing that I had terrible stage fright in recitals, I quit my lessons and continued on alone. I was never good at reading music, but I still played the best way I knew how.
5. Here and there I began creating my own melodies and writing a lot of poetry, that eventually ended up combining to create - what! - a song...and then another...and then another...
6. As my song library grew, I carried on with the normal things - school, work, Bryant College, accounting positions...
7. Throughout the years, my obsession with music became stronger and stronger. Beginning with my first concert in 1988 - Tiffany with a little opening act some people may now know as New Kids On the Block - until just ten years later in '98 seeing Matchbox Twenty (then they were known as matchbox20) my head finally started to become a little less cloudy.
8. My world changed as I knew it the night I saw Matchbox and met the guys that chilly March evening in 1998. Rob Thomas became my "reason for reason," and that reason was that I was meant to write music and make my world revolve around it.
9. I saw Matchbox Twenty (and Rob Thomas and Kyle Cook in their solo careers) more times than I can count and thank goodness because I realized that my poems weren't poems - they were song lyrics! And all of those little melodies I wrote all of these years on my piano weren't just happy little ditties - they were songs.
10. I went out and bought myself a Mac, starting recording my songs and haven't stopped. I have my own little recording studio here at home, but that was just to make some demos. I wanted to make a more marketable album so I could share my music with all of you. So that is when I decided to head into a real recording studio.
11. Mockingbird Music has become my second home and Producer/musician/engineer Derek Pisano and I have been creating some really, really good things. And all the while I keep on writing and recording my songs...they pretty much pour out of me without stopping. I like to refer to my songs as my diary - maybe its a little cliche, but writing and recording music is therapeutic for me.
You may think you know me pretty well now - but you won't until you listen to my music. I dont think I'm comparable to many artists out there, but I can tell you that a very small few of my influences are Rob Thomas, Alicia Keys, Judy Garland, John Lennon. I am such a huge fan of music and have so much respect and admiration for so many songwriters. It's impossible to list them all.
So take a listen, it won't hurt, right? And follow me through my Musical Adventures - it should be quite a ride!!!
dreamBig,
Arlanna
Arlanna
