Jun 3, 2011
Hi everyone
How are you doing? All is good in Beijing at Xiu Bar with Liquid Band…have a sneaky peek…
My childhood was filled to the brim with life on stage until a couple of years after moving to London I just lost my way. No auditions came through, the rejection letters from record labels kept coming and working as a singing-waitress was not a long-term career. So I guess I just put my music on a shelf. I half-heartedly dipped my head in the music world for about 6 years until a life-changing incident happened.
You see over those 6 years I landed up working as an Event Manager steadily climbing the corporate ladder, and one week the company went on a business trip where plenty of team building activities were put in place. One of them was a little chat from this motivational speaker…during his speech he asked for a volunteer who wanted to change their life, so I furiously waved my hand in the air for this opportunity (because deep down I really wanted to be a fulltime musician and songwriter). So he chose me to come up and asked what I really wanted to do in my life and what were the three things stopping me from doing this. I answered him and then he said to me that he was going to place the silver tip of a wooden arrow in the soft part of my throat and he would hold the other side of the arrow…whilst doing this, I needed to channel the reasons stopping me from living my dream out of my head, until all I could see was my vision. When I was ready to then step forward with all my might…this step would snap the arrow in half and represent me breaking through to my vision without these fears ever holding me back again. As I stepped forward with a great force the arrow snapped in half!
From this moment onward my life did change and now these fears no longer stop me:
1. Myself
2. Dependency and security of a stable income
3. My relationship and the commitment it required in the future
It took a few years to re-establish myself by working days in the office and nights singing/working on music until eventually I went fulltime as a musician. After writing and launching my own album HerStory, I found that I needed time to break out and rediscover and improve on the real performer in me. After seeing Alicia Keys in concert and how dynamic she was, I was blown away as how Miss Keys could be so captivating whether just playing on the grand piano or singing in a fully choreographed dance routine…not saying that I am the next Alicia Keys but I was so inspired by her that it encouraged me to explore and develop my career in performance.
To do this I needed to surround myself with great people that inspired, developed and pushed me to work harder, to reach for the top and be a star.
Eric-Jan Harmsen of Teatro Pereyra, Ibiza was the first person who really saw something in me so took me under his wing and brought me to life. Then I worked for Titus Raj from Music for Asia and London for GHotel in Penang. For the 11 months, I have worked for Georges Elchakieh from el-live Productions in three of his bands; Maximum, Magenta and Liquid.
It’s been a fantastic journey since May 2009 performing 6/7 nights a week, singing hit songs and recreating what the original artist does by adding my own mark. One thing I have learnt is that if you do not DELIVER, the audience does not BELIEVE you. There is no time for faking it or lack of confidence or being tired; if you don’t genuinely mean what you’re singing, how can your audience feel it? It’s simple they can’t. There is also no time to waste on thinking how great the audience thought I was doing P!nk last Saturday, because today I need to do it again for a completely different crowd, and they might need even more convincing than last Saturday. With this mentality in mind, no negativity can filter in from the outside world and I mean nothing. The energy I need to project is always a positive, heart-felt one.
Whilst performing at Xiu Bar, Liquid Band received some wonderful news that we have been voted the ‘Best House Band’ in Beijing by The Reader Bar and Club Awards, The Beijinger Magazine. An incredible feat to have achieved and we can only work harder and harder to be the best that we can be.
As a songwriter I always ask is it your performance or the hit song/artist that help bring the house down? It’s both; one cannot be live without the other. So many hours of pure sweat, brain power and creativity mould each art form with such furious delicacy! Having being both the singer-songwriter and performer, this is exactly what I wanted to do and am accomplishing daily, always working closer and closer to my vision. I am living my teenage dream and am so blessed…watch video below or check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHNtesSam7M.
Now it’s still a long road ahead but I know improvement is ongoing and no real success comes without extreme hard work. So keeping on, keeping on!
Love to all my family, friends and fans across the globe…your belief is my driving force :>
Love and light
LT
XXX