TONI CHILDS - BIOGRAPHY Twenty years after exploding into our pop-rock consciousness with her critically acclaimed, platinum selling debut Union, two Grammy nominations (including one for Best New Artist) and an east coast tour with childhood idol Bob Dylan, singer-songwriter Toni Childs emerges from a much too long musical exile to deliver a crucial, heartfelt message for these trying times: Keep The Faith. Beyond affirming her role as an important voice of inspiration for an entirely new generation, Keep The Faith is her first album since a full self-healing induced recovery from Graves disease. This new album marks a long-awaited creative resurgence with producers David Tickle and David Ricketts. Tickle was the main producer of Union. Ricketts co-wrote and associate produced many of the tracks on Union and was Child’s co-producer and co-writer on her 1991 follow-up House of Hope, which featured one of her signature tunes “I’ve Got To Go Now,” a huge hit for her in Australia. The two were also credited producers on her massively popular 1996 compilation The Very Best Of Toni Childs, the fifth biggest selling album in Australia that year (with over 500,000 copies sold), which featured her riveting cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers To Cross.” The disc also became her third platinum selling Top 10 album in New Zealand. Thousands of Childs’ fans worldwide who had been wondering when she’d do a fourth studio album (her last, 1994’s The Woman’s Boat, earned her another Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Performance) can credit Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues and Until The Violence Stops fame) with inspiring the singer to dig deep again and let the emotions that had been brewing for so many years come out. Childs, who had been involved in numerous charitable activities since moving to Kauai soon after her diagnosis—including Kauai School Gardens, and GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) Free Kauai—was acting in a local production of The Vagina Monologues to raise money for the island’s YWCA Sexual Assault Treatment Center when Ensler, a longtime fan of Childs’ music showed up one night to check out the show. They fast became friends and by night’s end, Ensler asked Toni to write an anthem for Until The Violence Stops. Childs, a native of Southern California who signed her first publishing deal with Island Music in London in 1981 was moved by Enlser’s encouragement to return to music for a great cause. Eve hit a chord with the artist by providing a lofty goal, to write a song that would inspire people to end the violence that is inflicted on women and children for all time. In contemplating Eve’s request, Childs had an insight that if violence was really going to end against women and children, then women first needed to stop inflicting violence upon themselves through low self esteem. In the years between being diagnosed with Graves disease—a serious thyroid disorder characterised by goiter, exophthalmos, and hyperthyroidism caused by an antibody-mediated auto-immune reaction—and getting her music career back on track, Childs learned the value and emotional and physical healing power of self-love. Discovering that certain environmental factors may have played a part in her illness led Childs to become an activist with such organisations as GMO Free Kauai. Committing to a simpler lifestyle, she bought a 4.5 acre property and became an organic farmer. Her Prosperity Farm now has over 120 laying hens, more than 50 ducks, a horse named Sunny, and is soon to have two ewes, a ram, and a milk cow called Lucy. While working on her farm, Childs began seeing a therapist on Kauai who told her that all disease stems from a lack of self-love and invited Childs to touch every part of her body with love every time she showered, thanking her body for all the gifts it gave her. In the process of healing her body, Childs found out that she was allergic to sulfates, and she realised it was difficult to find various products like shampoos that didn’t contain it, so she started making her own products with no chemicals or known carcinogenic ingredients. This led the entrepreneurial-minded singer to launch Feminine Mysteries, an organic natural body care company with products named after body parts: I Love My Hair, I Love My Face, I Love My Pits, I Love My Tits***, etc. In line with her desire to heal the “beauty wound” in women everywhere, she created a line of Chakra body polishes. As she recommences her recording career and began touring after more than a decade away, Childs formally launched Feminine Mysteries in Australia and New Zealand in 2008.