Then reality TV land happened. I felt like I was dropped onto a weird board game, dressed up, and pushed along with a roll of the dice. I didn’t know what The Voice was until I was knee-deep in it. I was on Season One, so I had the gift of walking in blind. I always tell people that if it had been season two, and I had seen the show, I never would have gone on. Not because it’s a terrible show — on the contrary, it was a lovely show and I made some amazing friends — but, reality TV was just never my way. Competition in music was weird to me. Being judged by every move I made was new to me. My manager told me to audition for this “show.” “I’m not sure what it is,” he said, “but you might as well. What do you have to lose?”
He was right. I was almost 22 years old, living in a dump in New York City with nothing but a mattress on the floor and a fold out lawn chair, and working at Crumb’s Bake Shop dishing out cupcakes and coffee to (sorry New York but) very impatient and often rude folks. Meg and Dia had just recorded a record, “Cocoon,” which cost us all our savings from tour and didn’t do very well on iTunes.
I flew to L.A. to audition for the show. At the time, there were, to my knowledge, 4 coaches, or something like that. No one had been confirmed. I didn’t know it was going to be this huge show. I didn’t know they were going to have mega superstars as coaches.
With luck and chance on my side, I got through the first round and was awestruck the entire time by the magnitude of it all. How did I get here?
During the interviews I would speak in great lengths about my band and our record out on iTunes, but when the editing folks got a hold of it, I was suddenly the “children’s book author from Utah,” and that was that. That was my story apparently. So, whatever, I just wanted to sing. But I was terrified. I had performed my whole life, but I had always performed with my sister. Now I was alone. On stage, in front of millions. Alone.
The aftermath of The Voice was good and bad. Good because I got picked up by Universal Records but bad because my band quickly fell apart. The record label wouldn’t take all of us since no one on the show knew anything about us, so I just tried to keep it under my name as a solo act, but with my band. But it turns out, that was easier said than done.
Our band slowly fell apart and my relationship with my sister turned distant and strained. It was never cruel, never cold, but more like…far away. My best friend and I had lost touch somehow, and I felt even more alone.
I turned to the bright lights of Hollywood to keep me company, but it turned out to be fickle and, as my favorite leading man Holden Caulfield would say, “phony.”
I made an album called RED. It was specially “crafted” by LA’s top writers and producers and was put out on 
Universal. I don’t mean to cut it down. I really don’t. My heart and soul went into that record, but it just so happens that my heart was half full and my soul was drained and missing something even though I didn’t know what it was.
The record did OK. It did especially well in Asia so I was over there a lot, much to my delight, since I adore South East Asia and I also adore traveling.
Then, a couple years later, I got dropped, and I moved on into ….this weird stretch of distant blue. A weird fog came over me. I stopped….caring. A year passed. Another year. Another year. “In the studio,” I’d Tweet. “Writing session today in Venice,” I’d Tweet. But who cares really? Did I?
I was a washed up, bitter ex-musician who used to have a future.