Happy Retro Girl

Heavily influenced by The Beatles, I was inspired to start writing songs at the tender age of nine. By the time I was 12 I had my first "group", except I was the only one with an ear for music.

By age 15 I knew I wanted to be the "next Carole King." The music biz has never been easy to break into, and I really wanted to just be behind the scenes, writing the hits and hearing them on the radio performed by the big stars.

I rewrote my Grammy acceptance speech every few years. But then life took me in different directions. One too many letdowns and I "pulled down my antenna" and refused to write down the songs that came into my head.

Songs have always come to me in dreams. I was able to train myself into waking up and jotting down in my own little "code" what was going through my head. The challenge comes when I wake up for the day and try to decipher the code and then finish the song.

I came back to pursuing the dream in the mid-1990s and I try to be contemporary, but alas I've had to learn to embrace my retro soul.

In my head, there's no getting away from the music I love, from 1950s doo wop through the '60s and up to 1974. During my first serious attempts at success, my influences were Carly Simon and The Eagles.

These days I'm not really influenced by anyone. I know that my style can't be pigeon-holed and it's impossible to compare it with anyone's from any era.

I am the band...except for a few songs in which the music is performed by my wonderful friend and great musician Roger Reed.

I think I'm set apart from contemporary bands and artists by the catchy bounciness of my songs, and the fact that they're loaded with lyrics.