Behind the Demo Tape 2008

As some of you will know my first shot at the larger NZ music industry was in 2008, while I was at Whitecliffe and after Stars in Their Eyes I put together some photos for a demo tape, created the designs of my own envelopes, and sent off the CDs with 'House of Blue', 'Of I', and 'Blink' to 100 and something record companies within NZ and overseas. 'Rise, and rise again, until lambs become lions' I think that is the appropriate saying for this scenario. Most of the overseas CDs were returned, the addresses were not correct or they were sent back as companies don't accept unsolicited mail. Within New Zealand I got a lot of interesting responses, a couple of places the producers said they would be interested to take me on if they were signing artists but at the time it was the beginning of the NZ recession and not many were. A few producers commented on the quality of my songwriting- that I had good music, but my vocals were not to their liking! The others loved my stuff and said it would be lovely live, but wouldn't work recorded for mainstream. That it just wouldn't sell. It's that final point that I disagree with, because I always envisioned my songs produced to a state so conceptually different from the beginnings of just me and the piano. The general consensus from everyone was that these days record companies especially within NZ don't really bring up artists like they used to, and instead now artists have to create a large following and then the record companies pretty much handle the production and distribution of the music with only some marketing. So to create an established fan base other than on YouTube was proving pretty difficult at the time and after numerous awkward encounters at pubs and clubs and bands that played heavy metal and folk and easy listening music- I had trouble finding somewhere I could fit in and everything trickled to a halt.

The first time I played live, it was for a performing competition 'Word Up' in 2008 where I won the solo artist category- by writing the first three proper songs I had ever written, two days prior. I already had the lyrics but was struggling to get the music out, and when I sat down and realized it was now or never, I just played. I played all three in one go. Song writing for me is a really mysterious process, and I often find its like my hands have a mind of their own. I have to keep up with what I play and sometimes I will play half a song, then go- "Oh, shit- what did I just play!?" so I get around this by playing it 20 seconds at a time, repeating and then continuing. I recorded the piano for the three songs for the performance at Word Up, and I sang along with my lyrics scribbled down on bits of paper. Needless to say I forgot half the lyrics at the time and had to make it up as I went along... I was definitely not expecting to win. The Chuck Taylor Converse shoes you see me wearing in the black and white music photoshoot are from the voucher prize I got for that performance.

So that's the story up until now, and I thought I would post the pictures of my story back in 2008...

Colour Film SLR Shots:

 

35mm *Random Digital Shots:

All Photos Copyright Katherine Ann-Marie Tuenter 2008