As a natural channel for creative energy, I've heard music playing in my head for as long as I can remember — beautiful, haunting melodies floating into my ears from some invisible radio in the sky. Raised in the secluded mountains of southern Oregon, I grew up away from the outside world, home schooled by my mother and unscathed by the forbidden influences of television and radio. In the absence of all typical pop culture programming, I drew inspiration from nature and entertainment from within.

As time went by, my imagination became my teacher, then my playground and my friend, as my constant creative wanderings carried me ever deeper into its uncharted depths. There, within the magical flux I would one day come to call the quantum field of pure potentiality, I followed a faint, distant melody the way Alice followed the Little White Rabbit.

Shortly before my 10th birthday, in an event that would come to shape the course of my life, I sat down at a piano for the first time and realized I knew how to play it. It was only a sense at first, but the keys seemed familiar to me somehow — the way they looked, the way they felt beneath my fingertips — and I sat rivited to the bench, transfixed and in awe, exploring hand positions and combinations of notes until songs were pouring out of me like I'd been playing all my life.

By 2004 I had moved to Hollywood and established myself as a respected up and comer on the Los Angeles music scene, known for giving truly passionate live perfmances and, occasionally, showing up to gigs in my underwear. Armed with nothing more than my piano skills and a growing stack of catchy songs, I worked with a variety of producers, rockstars and well meaning money minded industry types to bring myself to life on records. In spite of major label interest, radio play, an LA Music Award, and special features on ABC, MTV and MuchMusic, I hadn't even begun to develop my creative potential as an artist nor had I found my true sound.

And I knew it.

When industry A&R suggested I get out from behind the piano and team up with co-writing producers who would sculpt a sound and style for me, I was at first intrigued by the intoxicating possibility of commercial success. However, it soon became clear that in order to "become" what they wanted, I would have to sacrifice my own natural artistic development and give up the greatest gift of being an artist, the supernatural experience of truly finding myself.

I've always been a lone wolf, so, in 2005, without a record label, a producer or even a set song list, I borrowed a microphone and a digital piano and recorded Live Summer Session in a single emotionally raw take. It was hardly my best performance, and it was more like a practice session than a record, but it sold thousands of copies on my website and garnered some modest critical acclaim. In the years that followed, I attempted to find a producer who could capture the symphonic fireworks going off in my head, but it soon became clear that I had chosen my path long ago. I would have to go it alone.

In February 2011, I recorded a couple live ditties with the built-in mic on my Macintosh computer. And then in July I finally set out to learn how to produce myself. I bought Logic Pro and a little m-audio keyboard and started pushing buttons. I had no idea what I was doing but I knew what I heard in my head and by October things finally clicked. It is now December 21, 2011, and I am six songs deep into my first self-produced album, WAKE UP DREAMLAND, due to drop in 2012.

I'm still learning how to be my superhero producer self so bear with me on my journey.

Musically Yours,

Christine Anderson
Wed, Dec 21, 2011