Hi, my name is Ashleigh Sladen. I’m a singer, songwriter and musician from Verneuil-Sur-Seine, a little town near Paris. I currently live in Plymouth for university studies in Marine Biology and Coastal Ecology. My music can be classified as acoustic-pop-rock. I recently released two of my original songs called Hide & Seek and Frost Flower. Like most children, I had piano lessons when I was six, I but wasn’t really into it. I gave up after a few years. I first got really interested in music in 2005, when I auditioned to sing in a school show. I decided to try guitar, and I really got into it when my childhood best friend, my little sister, and me formed this all-girl pop rock band called Ashbagui in 2010. Our first concert was for the anniversary of our school. We entered this music competition called “Emerganza,” where we played a few shows until the semi-finals in Paris. The band parted ways in the last months of 2013, when we knew we couldn’t see each other often with our different timetables and future locations. Since then, I took a break from music to focus on entering university. I started playing music again at Jam House, an event organized every Thursday night by some students. One night, BBC Introducing came to hear original songs by students. I played two original songs and, since then, I do gigs around Plymouth every week. All the music I create is written and composed mainly by me, but some are also co-written and produced by Jared Harding, currently a 3rd year music student at Plymouth University. When recording in studio, the music always starts off with my voice and me playing the acoustic guitar. Afterwards, we suggest ideas on how the...

Jamaican singer-songwriter Da Professor has people all over the world talking about his hit single and video titled I Love Myself. It’s a fantastic, uplifting song. I just had to know more about the song’s back story. Da Professor told me: “This first single from Spiky Records was composed at a time in my life where I was reevaluating everything I had accomplished in my music career. I realized that I needed to embrace loving myself in order to reach the goals I set for myself. It was a turning point.” I Love Myself is the first song in a trilogy that will be released by Da Professor over the next six months. Being from Jamaica, you can definitely hear island influences in Da Professor’s music. When I asked Da Professor about who he considers his major music influences, he gave me an thought-provoking answer: “I listened to a lot of artists growing up, not just Reggae. I think you should give every artist involved with music credit. I listen to both good music and music people say is not good, so I can hear what makes a song successful and hear the mistakes. I pick the goodness out of all of that. I always try to be myself and be original.” There’s an interesting story behind how Da Professor got his artist name: “The name Da Professor was given to me as a nickname by my friends around age 17. I was very mature for my age and always took on leadership roles. I think the name suits me, so I work with it. Da Professor stands for a professor of life, not just music. You can get a lot of inspiration from me and my music.” Da Professor moved to the United...

The Jon Collins Band’s new hit single and video for the breakup song Don’t Believe in You has everyone talking. The video laughingly depicts scenarios in which partners find their significant other cheating on them. Everyone wants to know if any situation in the video is based on Jon’s own personal experiences.  Jon laughed when he told me: “I find that songwriting is always a bit of truth and a bit of fiction. I’ve certainly had a couple of breakups, but this video is a little over the top. I didn’t experience the things in this video, but the song came from some real place, for sure.” The band’s soon-to-be released new single is called Happy Breakup Day, so I’m sensing a theme here. Jon brushed it off saying, “It’s a little bit of a coincidence that these songs came out back-to-back. They’re both breakup songs and they both have a fair bit of humor. You can take this serious topic and you can make the song really serious or you can put a little spin on it. We had fun putting a little spin on this topic. Jon told me that he’s just finishing up the edit on the video for Happy Breakup Day: “In some ways, this video is crazier than the last one. The premise is a guy realizes that his relationship isn’t working, so (to save face) he shows up at his girlfriend’s birthday party and sings her this song.” Members of the Jon Collins band have day job where they are hired by one partner to show up at parties and break up with the other partner. The video takes advantage of their unique occupation: “It was a lot of fun to shoot. We had a 3-day shoot here...

Which images, ideas, or emotions do the two words forest and falls conjure up for you? Let your mind go a little AWOL for a second; there’s no correct answer to that question, by the way. For the six of us in this band, the name Forest Falls epitomizes in a single statement why it is we make music. It’s the embodiment of a journey: from how we met to where we want to go. It’s equal parts history book and travel guide. It’s what inspires us every day, as six equals and six best friends, to write and perform our music. Why did we want to write this blog? Because we’d love to offer you a taste of it too; what it feels like to be following the creative path you were always meant to take. Our music is honest. No facades, lies or cover-ups. We want to share that feeling! Forest Falls is a band born out of a love for collaboration. It’s such a cool idea really, that a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Think about what that actually means! We can do in a group what we can’t do on our own. It was this idea that started everything: the imperative for our lead singer, Jon, to create music with others. When he left Perth a few years ago, he piled his life into a Tarago and headed off to Melbourne in a bid to meet other like-minded musicians. Jon met Jamie, who knew Jez, who knew Gabe, who met Shaun, who knew Lucy from Uni. It was almost as if it was meant to happen this way. The evolution of the band which you now see is the evolution which finally feels as if...

Growing up in Soviet Russia, it was very tough to find different types of music, simply because there wasn’t a lot of variety. Foreign music was off limits. That didn’t stop many people from listening to music from the 50’s and 60’s secretly playing in one lucky person’s home. Friends and family would gather for a listen to the exotic, forbidden overseas rarity called Rock ‘n Roll (American music). As hits such as Hello, Dolly, Volare and Sunny seeped through, I heard the sounds that I have loved ever since. It was a dream come true. I loved American music, anything that I could listen to. I loved singing along. My passion for music spans for decades and knows no language boundaries. I love singing and entertaining people; it brings a smile to my face and warms my heart. I was fortunate enough to have my own TV and radio show that provided me the opportunity to meet wonderful people, music legends and various interesting people that share my passion for the arts. Because I am an entertainer, I learned hundreds of songs in different languages. Having met so many wonderful people, artists that I looked up to, I was truly blessed to record a whole album with these legends called Oleg Frish: Duets With My American Idols. I am most excited now for the official release of my album on May 19, 2015, to see the hard work of myself and so many others involved come to fruition.  Though the work put into this album was hard, it was also utmost enjoyable. I am truly blessed to have wonderful friends who lend their voices and songs to my duets album, friends such as Gary U.S. Bonds, Ben E. King, B.J. Thomas, Lainie Kazan,...

My musical journey over the years has been nothing short of diverse. I’ve jumped from band to band, trying to find the style and genre that fits who I am. I started singing in a metal band when I was in seventh grade, but I slowly matured into a beachier, laid back feel with my friends from Atlanta, Mango Tango. I went to a military boarding school, so we only wrote and performed together through the summer following graduation. I had a blast, but eventually I knew we had to part ways for college. It was a process, acclimating from a rigid military school to a liberal arts college in the heart of Nashville. But in the end, I know attending the Belmont School of Music was right for me. Ever since I was young, I’ve anchored myself through music. It is how I express myself, cope with life’s hardships and connect with the world around me. I base my songs off of my desires or events in my life that shape me. The song could be about a wild day exploring the Tennessee country or articulating the internal struggles I’ve faced through maturing into a young man. Name a topic, and I can write a song about it from a deep, personal level. Song writing and composition are both very important to me, and I don’t know what I would do without them. Music is who I am in every sense of the phrase. Currently, I am a solo artist in Nashville, focused on playing out and recording the many songs I already have in my repertoire. I have one single officially released as well as a collection of free songs from my work in Atlanta. I am also in the works of...

International singer-songwriter Anne Marie Bush has been topping the charts from her home in Copenhagen, Denmark to Los Angeles, CA. Her latest single and video for HiTech Chick is hot, hot, hot. I can’t sit still when I listen to that song! Fans love a good back story, so I asked Anne Marie to tell me more about HiTech Chick: “I was listening to some tracks in my home studio here in Copenhagen, and I had the feeling that I was turning into a geek. I’m always on my gear, recording and playing my instruments. I wanted to write about it. Then, the hook HiTech Chick came up and I built a story around it.” One of my favorite Anne Marie Bush tracks is her funky hit Supasexual. It’s an amazing dance tune and the song has a fun back story too: “I wrote that song when I was living in LA. I was hanging out with my friends Bill Champlin, lead singer from the band Chicago, and his wife Tamara at their house along with Michael Caruso. We started to play. Bill picked up the guitar and started playing a riff. Then, we came up with the hook Suprasexual. The song evolved from there. We wrote it in a few hours. We did a demo and then decided to record it for real in the studio with producer Peter Roberts. We released it on my own record label and it became a Top 10.” Anne Marie Bush has been performing her entire life, since before age 12. As Anne Marie told me, “I’ve always been writing songs. When I was 12, I begged my mom to buy me a piano. I had some really great internships while I was in elementary school and...

What is the essence of music? Is it superior technical prowess, or is it having a sense for what moves people? Whoever you ask will have a different answer, but I think that all musicians will agree that at its core, music is about collaboration. Music is a tapestry created by an underlining appreciation for past forms and by the desire to weave our own new and exciting contributions to this rich musical history. In Evolution, the new album I just released under the name of Alan Hewitt and One Nation, we took this to heart. My first serious role in music was as a drummer when I was growing up in Michigan. I was around 12, playing in clubs with guys who were older than me. Later on in those early days, during my musical upbringing if you will, I started touring as a drummer with different types of groups playing all types of music. You could say that it was through experiences such as these that I developed a taste for working and creating music with others, in and out of my comfort zones. It was at the Berklee College of Music that I got serious about keyboards and became interested in the composition and production side of music, which eventually led to working on many film and TV projects. In the past, I have had many incredible opportunities. I had the honor of producing alongside Maurice White of Earth Wind & Fire for over half a decade. I wrote and played keys on Warrant’s Cherry Pie record as well as Jonathon Butler’s Lost to Love CD, which went Gold, and many more.  We were fortunate enough to reach multi-platinum status with both Cherry Pie and with EWF’s Greatest Hits. Since 2010,...

I first started playing music around the age of 6, when I picked up the harmonica and played along with my favorite records. I never would have imagined the way it would all play out. Now, a few weeks away from releasing our new EP Faces of Love with The Jon Collins Band, it’s fun to look back at different events that have led to this point. After playing the harmonica for about ten years, I started playing in studios with different musicians. During my college days in North Carolina, I got my first taste of what it felt like to tour as a front man and as a singer. It’s safe to say that I’ve been hooked to the feeling, as I’ve been doing this type of stuff ever since. When I came to Los Angeles, I continued making music and had some stints as an actor in both theatre and on television programs such as Will and Grace and Scrubs. Great experiences though they were, my main focus was music. It was here in LA that I began working with George Daly, the former VP of Columbia Records who signed The Cars and now works as CEO for About Records. With George, I co-wrote several songs that have gone on to be used by other artists and in film and television. In 2012, I formed the Jon Collins Band with some friends in San Francisco’s Hyde Street Studios, the same studio that had produced records by artists like The Grateful Dead and Green Day. Not a bad place to get started. Our first album Hero was released in 2013 and it spawned the singles Ashley and Let Love Live. Both of those singles received airplay, and the former reached #60 on the...

We selected Celeste Buckingham as our ReverbNation contest winner because we absolutely love her hit single and video for Run Run Run. Of course, I had to know the inside scoop about the song. Did you know Celeste Buckingham wrote the song when she was 16? Celeste told me: “I decided to get up at 2 am in the morning. I couldn’t sleep. I sat in my room with my out of tune guitar and wrote this song. The next morning, I played it for my younger sister, who’s also a singer-songwriter and my biggest critic. She said that she liked it, so I took it to the studio and recorded it. I honestly did not believe in that record very much, and it blew up in my face overnight. It gave me the opportunity to be played on the radio in Europe; I toured with that song; and it was endorsed by different companies. This song was a magical accident.” This month, Celeste Buckingham released her new single Unpredictable, so I just had to know more about that song too: “I’ve been in the studio for the last six months with my producer Earl Cohen in New York. I’ve been working on a new album and this is the first song of that new material. It reminds some people of Run Run Run, which is great. I would love it if people could find themselves in that song. We’re faced with a lot of unpredictable situations, good and bad. I feel that if I can help people find themselves in a song, then I’ve achieved what I wanted to do as a songwriter.” Unpredictable was recently released online and through PopCrush. The song will be played exclusively on Radio Disney for two weeks...

It has been said that I play the tunes you like to hear in my own unique style. This saying could not be more true, and it is found in bold letters on my website. Not to sound full of myself, but I do consider myself to be multi-talented and I have my hand in just about everything music. To give acknowledgement to my entertainment abilities and unique style, Roy Raftis the C.E.T. President in Edmonton, AB said this about a past Christmas party: “Everyone told me this was the best Christmas party that we have had, and I attribute the success of our weekend to you getting us started with the Friday night entertainment.” As an artist, in addition to my own songs, I also like to cover other artist’s songs and turn them into something different. They all have one thing in common: They are all “Jimmified”. When I’m not doing classic remakes, I like to focus on my music, which includes everything from jazz to reggae to pop and anything that comes in between.  I recently wrote a smooth jazz song called Agi’s Tune, which I dedicated to my late wife who lost her battle with cancer. Another song that I recently released was Dear Mr. Benson, which pays homage to one of my biggest idols, George Benson. Although these two songs are not all that I have written, they prove to be the most emotionally captivating for me. These songs have been played on various radio stations, including KSBR 88.5 FM, KJJZ 102.3 FM and on SmoothJazz.com Global Radio. I love to perform all over the world.  I was born in the US, but at an early age, I moved to Germany because my father was in the Army.  My family...

Hi, I am Obaid, a Bangladesh-based singer/songwriter/musician. My music can be classified as Alt-Rock-Indie-Pop. I recently released my debut double albums titled Prahelika-1 & Prahelika-2, which mean Enigma & Progress. Both albums contain a total of 15 of my original songs. These are acoustic guitar-based studio double albums, the first ever attempt by a solo artist in the history of Bangladesh’s music. All the music was written, tuned, composed, sang and produced by me. I wrote all the lyrics. I also played all the instruments that went into making my albums, including rhythm, lead and bass guitars, drums and percussion. In addition to self-producing these albums, I am also responsible for the artwork as well. All the inside illustrations of the albums, including the cover art for both albums, were painted by me. The songs speak to my inner-spiritual quests and experiences, my strengths, my limitations and my attempts at finding peace and serenity within my own self in the vicinity of this majestic Universe. The lyrics as well as the melody of the songs are my own take and understanding of life in general: the struggles, ambitions, dreams, the longing for positivism and the efforts to better myself as an individual by fighting off all sorts of negativity and pessimism. I hope that listeners can easily identify themselves with these earthly and soothing songs. Some other key characteristics of my music are that they are very confessional, absolutely sincere and very serious. I would like to think that Prahelika-1 & Prahelika-2 are great works of music. As far as my musical inspirations are concerned, I am mostly influenced by 80’s hard rock as well as the mainstream pop of that musically wonderful era. Music from the early 90’s grunge and alternative movement and rock music...