Flight Risk gets named "Album of The Summer"!

I know the summer is over, but it's just now sinking in that my album was named ALBUM OF THE SUMMER. I'm shocked. The article came out on the same day that I opened for Lizzo at Capitol Hill Block Party in the middle of a three day artist lounge that I was hosting with my company Parke Ave. Yeah, it was a lot.

The album contains nearly a decade of life lessons, trauma, and nostalgia from what feels like a past life. Stories of bad lovers, joyrides, toxic friends, and anxiety attacks.

As we ramped up to release day, I remember how nervous I was. Not just normal, every day kind of nervous but losing sleep and biting my nails down to the bone kind of nervous. Nearly every song on the album talks about experiences that I had never shared with people, so releasing them into the world had me feeling all sorts of things. Not only were these songs emotional and raw, they were going to bust my personal life wide open for the entire world to analyze and judge.

I've learned a lot about myself since I wrote these songs and my only hope now is that they may help someone else who is going through something similar.

Even though I'm different person than the girl that wrote these songs, I remember her vividly.

_________

I remember how she would go to her minimum wage job and pretend like she wasn't living out of her car. How she would cry alone at night because she didn't know how she was going to survive. How she wished she had the balls to do something with her music. How she wished someone would notice how bad she was hurting. How she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs for help. Yet, the only one she spoke to was her Casio.

Then came that fateful night when she ran into an old friend from high school who asked ... "are you still singing?"

She blushed and answered "No, I'm taking a little break right now."

The old friend responded "That's a bummer, you're really good. If you ever want to get out of this place and move to Seattle, you can live with me."

There it was. A tiny sliver of hope that she never thought would come.

_____

That was 6 years ago and I'm still amazed by how close I was to quitting. What would my life be like if I hadn't run into that old friend?

I'm grateful that I'll never know. Thank you to those who follow my journey and I send my love and encouragement to anyone currently suffering like I was. Stay strong and don't lose hope! Relief usually arrives at the very moment you are about to give up.