简介：Cody Karey was born December 25, 1990 in Fort St. James, British Columbia, Canada and continues to reside there with his family. Cody captivated his first audience at the age of 18 months while at a restaurant in Williams Lake, BC. and has been entertaining audiences ever since. When he was 5 years old, he auditioned to perform at the “Spirit of the North” telethon in Prince George, BC where he quickly became a telethon favourite. He performed at the event for four consecutive years and raised a substantial amount of money for the children’s wing of the Prince George Regional Hospital. Cody began working with his vocal coach in the year 2000 at the age of 10. In 2005, Cody competed at the British Columbia Provincial Festival of the Performing Arts; he was awarded 1st place and received a gold medal for Junior Musical Theatre. In September 2006, he was one of 11 contestants who earned a spot to perform for David Foster, Olivia Newton John, Babyface, Clay Aiken and Daisy Fuentes at the River Rock Casino in Richmond, British Columbia. He made the top five and received a great review from the judges. The timeline, while short from the outside, has been a bit of a grind for Karey, who left Fort St. James in September of 2008 to pursue his singing career in Vancouver after entering a singing contest in Vancouver in August of 2007 which got him connected with David Foster, the Canadian music industry icon. “I was able to get out of the Fort a little bit and go and do some pretty incredible things and caught the bug from there for sure,” explained Karey. In the summer of 2008, he went to Toronto and was the finale number for an audience of 40,000 people for the opening of a new building at the Royal Ontario Museum. He then went to Dallas, Texas for a private event and as he listed his accomplishments, he became a little self-conscious of them and interrupted himself. “I feel like I’m name-dropping in a huge way right now,” he said. But his Mom was not so reluctant to name names, and said he performed at Farah Fawcett’s funeral service and Mohammed Ali’s 70th birthday party. She describes him as a really humble kid, but when I speak to him on the phone, Karey comes across as very articulate and confident, something he likely has learned in the years of performing and self-promotion he’s put into his career to date. “It was a lot of work there for awhile,” he recalled. “A lot of people have this vision of people going from relative obscurity and into the limelight fairly quickly, when in reality, in the vast majority of cases, an overnight success is ten years in the making,” he added. His manager, Su Bailey, who “discovered” Karey when he was 14 and a half years old, echoes this sentiment, and said she’s a firm believer “it takes 10 years to be an overnight success.” But Karey, while only 22, has been working towards where he is for a long time. “The good news for me is I’m seven years down that road already.” And where he is right now is being signed with Universal/Verve Records. The deal means Universal/Verve will now begin putting their promotional machine behind Karey. The company has committed to doing a record with Karey, which he said is a big deal for them to commit to the type of music he does and the shape of the music industry in the digital age. “It’s an indication and a commitment which is pretty cool as well,” he said. The deal also includes the possibility of five more records, as long as the music hits some markers along the way. With the power of David Foster behind him, Karey seems pretty confident something he will be able to make something happen. “It’s hard to imagine not having some level of success, it’s pretty exciting,” said Karey. After all the hard work to get a deal signed, Karey won’t be sitting back anytime soon, however. His determination to keep improving is obvious, and he said he is also focusing on becoming a better musician and diversifying his skills. “You know I play a little bit of everything but being able to hone my skills to a certain level of expertise is really important, especially in the type of music that I want to do and that I’m really passionate about,” he said. “I’m a person that is always striving for more and always striving for perfection.” “The sky’s the limit as far as I’m concerned.” A record deal with Universal/Verve Records is a long ways from starting out in Fort St. James singing at coffee houses, but when Karey tells people he’s from Fort St. James, he said it always makes for a good story, and has given him a good grounding. “It was really a fantastic place to grow up as a kid and have a childhood and to be able to sort of move on with a base of a) humility, and b) a really solid understanding of community,” said Karey. Now what exactly does Karey’s music sound like? Well, it’s complicated. “I had someone describe it to me, once upon a time as the illegitimate love child of Michael Bublé and Josh Groban, so you can maybe imagine what that would be like,” described Karey. “Sort of a sophisticated, orchestral pop if you will, mostly predominantly big ballads, pop classical sort of piano tunes.” Not your average musical act, and definitely not something you would normally see in Fort St. James, but he obviously loves what he does and is making a go of it. “Realistically I’ve got an opportunity right now where I can kind of get to a place in my life where I can take my passion and turn it into something that I can make a living by.”