ABOUT ME

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a performer. When I was little sometimes I wanted to be an opera singer and at other times an actress but always I wanted to be performing on stage. 

At school I was highly involved with music and drama - I played flute and piano, sang in choirs and was always a part of plays and concerts. I wrote my first song as part of a school assignment for GCSE music. 

At 18 I went to university to study Drama and Theatre Studies - at this time my heart was set on being an actress – but I soon discovered that this wasn’t for me and though I loved my studies and continued on to achieve an MA in Drama and Theatre Studies the music gradually started to take over.

At 19 I had my daughter Rosie and this changed my life completely in the most amazing way! She is the best thing that ever happened to me! Because of this big life change I was suddenly spending huge amounts of time at home - and it was the perfect opportunity for my creativity to blossom. In this time I was able to work on writing my own songs. I saved up for an 8-track and I would spend hours at the keyboard writing and recording. I made a demo of my own songs which I shared with friends and family. 

In the future I plan to re-record these songs and share them with everyone. They are mainly Gothic Punk in style as this was the music that I loved the most. 

There were many things about confidence that I did not understand at this time. By defining myself as shy I held myself back in many ways. I got discouraged - because although I had made my demo and learnt a huge amount by doing it - I could not work out why my recordings were so much quieter than other recordings. Now that I have more technical knowledge I can understand that mixing is another layer of artistry in itself - and that my very basic mixing skills were not enough. I also had a perfectionist mindset and had not yet understood that in order to learn I needed to share things even if they were not totally perfect! It would only be through sharing that I would learn what I needed to do next to improve my work.

My creativity got side-tracked into making my Spookypie Dolls. I sold many of these dolls and they travelled all over the world. Frankenstein Girl now lives in South Africa!  

A chance message to my dolls page on MySpace led to me joining a local Symphonic Rock band called Vrillion and at last I was able to work with other musicians. I was absolutely terrified! But it was a brilliant experience and I learnt a huge amount from doing it. 

We made an EP together and I contributed a lot to the song-writing as well as being the lead singer and playing my flute in the songs. 

We also got signed to be promoted by Ravenheart Records. I still remember the first time that I realised that the audience were singing my own song words back to me and it was an amazing feeling! 

After some time in Vrillion I realised that I wanted to be in a band where I could have more fun on stage. In Vrillion I had to have quite a serious stage persona. I wanted to create a band that was a really fun and crazy experience for the audience. I was very lucky to be greatly encouraged and supported by my boyfriend at the time - who had the kind of confidence and promotional skill that I lacked - as well as being a great rock drummer. Cherry Scream was formed - named after my rock alter-ego - and we had an amazing adventure with this band. 

We played over 100 gigs, supporting big name bands like Enuff Z'Nuff, Tigertailz and LA Guns' Tracii Guns, playing at venues all over the country including Camden Underworld in London. I learnt huge amounts about running a band from this experience. 

We made recordings of some of the songs in 2015 but at the time I did not have the resources to pay for them to be properly mixed and mastered. The songs that I wrote during this time are Hard Rock / Rock n' Roll / Post Punk in style and you can hear some of them on my newly released album! 

After heartbreaking turmoil in my life from various sources I needed time to re-focus and make myself totally independent. During this time I wrote an album of songs which I plan to complete and record. The songs are influenced by Japanese Visual Kei, Gothic Rock, Classical Music and Symphonic Rock and are more poetic in nature than my rowdy rock songs!

I worked really hard to set myself up as a self-employed musician and through my piano teaching I was finally able to afford to pay to have the Cherry Scream recordings mixed professionally. 

The final piece of the puzzle was finding the confidence to put myself forward - to put my songs out there. This took a lot of work and I had to face every single internal demon that I had one by one and beat them down. Sadly it has taken me this long to understand that confidence is not something that you need to have before you make the leap. The confidence is what you gain through making that giant leap and landing on your feet.

Now that I have finally had the courage to share my songs with the world it is an exciting time for me. I plan to put a new band together and start gigging again. As well as working on new songs I want to record many of the songs that I have already written throughout my life and I look forward to sharing them with you all.