I am Edina, MN born and Fargo, ND raised. I am self taught in piano and guitar which I think is pretty cool. I remember writing songs when I was as young as seven years old, but I started playing instruments around when I received a guitar from Santa at the age of eight. I wasn't very grateful for this guitar and immediately requested a keyboard. The first song I ever taught myself how to play on the keyboard was "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple. Because of my interest in playing piano, my parents enrolled me in piano lessons which I hated. I tried to practice but I didn't understand why I had to start all over at the basics when I already knew how to play. I didn't want to play songs that felt so boring to my ears and didn't challenge my fingers. I was learning how to play songs that I knew and could hear on the radio. My piano teacher was patient with me even though I was an 11 year old with an anarchist view towards piano lessons. She'd let me play for her the songs I had been teaching myself at the end of every lesson and would help me with parts I was struggling with. Ultimately, she ended up giving me the most important gift in my music career: a free piano that she had restored. It was a solid mahogany and cast iron upright grand piano that I still play today. Once I stopped my piano lessons I felt free of any limitations and began teaching myself more and more songs. I began teaching myself two songs every week. I practiced relentlessly, but I realized something once I reached middle school: Who was I practicing for? I'd occasionally play a song I was excited about for my parents or a friend but I began to feel a growing need to display my efforts to a wider audience. It was in choir that I really began to learn how to sing. As an alto I fell in love with harmonizing and shaping the underbelly of a song. Once I entered high school, I auditioned for a select choir called Bella Orso Voci. It was there that I began to fall in love with the dynamics of music and started to see the true emotional nature of singing. I began to use the time I practiced piano as an outlet for my teen angst. I unleashed all of my hormones on to my piano which is where my songwriting truly began. The first song I ever wrote was about a boy I had a crush on since first grade and a day we spent at the lake with our friends when we were teenagers. ( I never told him that it was about him and now I'm saying it on the internet but you'd have to be an idiot not to know it was about him.) I remember being so frustrated that I started crying one night and began writing White Earth. (I mean, it's the name of his lake for god's sake.) This would be the first original song I would ever play publicly and one of the first songs I would ever record. Finally, I began to open up the curtain to what I had been working on since I was a little girl. When I was 15, my friend and I were back up singers for a local band called Shape Then Shift. This was not your typical high school band. It consisted of a 40 year old singer/songwriter and guitarist, a 20 something guitarist and two 15 year old girls. But kind of like those "odd couple" animal videos you see on YouTube it just worked strangely well. I equate everything I know about music to that band. I was a 15 year old girl and I was playing weekly shows, practicing every night after school, making music videos, doing shows outside of my home turf, hearing new music that was actually good and ultimately growing in to a performer. Once I left the band I suppose you could say the rest is history. I began to write more music and had made enough connections to begin opening for other local bands as a solo artist. I recorded my first three songs when I was seventeen. I have now opened for Caroline Smith, Rogue Valley, and Sarah Neufeld of Arcade Fire. I am constantly met with a boredom of my music and need to challenge myself but I will always use music as my escape and open diary.