Hayley Marie

I have been playing piano since I was seven years old, but I stopped playing around the 7th grade and picked it up again after I was introduced to Regina Spektor my sophomore year of high school. I had never heard anything like her, and I was immediately inspired to play the piano again. That was when I fell in love all over again with music and songwriting. When I first started playing my sophomore year of high school, I felt like I was trying too hard to sound like the spontaneous Regina Spektor. I realized that in order to be more successful, I would have to break away from my idol's style and develop my own in order to continue producing music that really encapsulates me as an individual. Over the years I have tried to develop my own style of music with the influences of bands like against me!, dresden dolls, tom petty, Ben Folds, the Beatles, third eye blind, alanis morrisette, red hot chilli peppers, and really anything that I listened to growing up. I feel like music is the one thing that truly allows anyone to create his or her own safe haven. Whenever I listen to music I view the world differently. The way everything looks changes and everything seems to be in a state of complete cohesiveness. One can make any song relate to their state of well being, and I find it fascinating that we as human beings can have that kind of experience simply through listening to another person's music. As a musician I want to create music that explains what I see and how I view my world, but at the same time I want others to take my songs and envision their own safe haven. I want to inspire people to appreciate everything about their life experiences. Much of my music has been inspired from my own experiences. One of my most personal songs "A Part of Us", was written for my friend Byron and my Uncle Bobby who took their own lives over the past year. Even though I wrote this song to explain how my friends, family, and I were and are still affected by the tragedies, the song can have a totally different meaning for someone else, and that is exactly what I want. I want people to envision and create when they listen to my music. I want them to get lost in their own world if only for a little while because that is what I do when I listen to my favorite artists. I feel that I am different from other bands because I do not create music to become famous or make money. I am not saying that that is the only reason other bands play out, but I feel many bands lose sight of their music do to money or rising fame. I create music because while I am writing I am releasing myself and learning so much about my own capabilities. When I play out in front of others I feel like it is equivalent to me standing on stage and telling everyone my life story. Most of the shows I have played I have not earned a profit, but that does not matter to me. I only wish to have the opportunity to be heard as an individual just trying to make some noise. I feel that playing in front of an audience is my chance to communicate with them. I am talking with them through my music. Musically I am not sure how to rank myself in comparison to others because to me that is not the point. The point for any musician is to simply create and inspire others to create. Music has been such a blessing to me because growing up I did not really know how to document my experiences or the experiences of others. Writing and playing music has let me grow as a person because it forces me to deal with my life experiences, and it allows me to communicate with so many other individuals about their own life experiences. Basically, in a nutshell, I am just a human being trying to make some noise with the hope that others will join in with me.