I grew up with a dream. A silly dream, but a big dream. We didn’t have Youtube when I was a kid. We didn’t have Spotify. If you wanted to perform, you couldn’t just open up your iPhone camera and put a tape up the same day…you actually had to perform.
When I was nine, my dad would take me to a senior citizens’ nursing home in St. George, Utah, and I would sing for a half hour during their lunch break. I remember it well. There was a room that looked like a big cafeteria with long tables, and they would all sit and look at me and clap and smile. That was the first time that I sang out in front of people and felt like I was connecting. I could see them reflecting on memories with each song.
I sang around town a lot…wherever they would have me. At the Utah rodeo, the county fair, the arts festival, the street festival, the Electric Theater.
I was in a band with my older sister, Meg, when I was fourteen. We wrote some songs, although if the truth be told, Meg was the writer first. She was the performer first. She’s the one who inspired me to do it all. And those were the best years of my life, playing on that stage with her and my best friends.
A lovely family owned a venue in St. George called The Electric theater, and they would let my sister and I, and our band, “Jade Harbor” open up for local acts. (I still have my first band t-shirt for my first band ever, and I’ll never sell it. Not for a million dollars). We opened up for so many musicians and that’s where we met our first manager, at a small local show in Utah.
I guess you can say the rest is history, right? We signed to an indie label, Doghouse Records, then went to Warner Bros. Records. Then got dropped, then I signed to Universal Records, then got dropped, and now I’m with Nettwerk. Four record labels before I’m thirty years old. I guess you can say I get around.
I was in a band for a long time called “Meg and Dia.” We put out 4 albums and 5 EP’s and toured for years and years. Some years I was on the road for 8 to 9 months, playing well over 200 shows a year. For the longest time, we didn’t have a bus. We slept in our van, in parks, in Walmart parking lots, and at strangers’ houses if they were kind enough to offer up their floor after a small show. We washed our hair in Starbucks bathrooms, and in the tiny, dirty back rooms of bars, our old sneakers sticking to the beer stained floor. Those were the best days of my life.