According to McCallum junior and
musician Grace London (more commonly known by her legal name, Grace
Schmidhauser), it all started with The Wizard of Oz. She credits her preschool
obsession with the movie and it’s songs as her first experience with music and
the first sign of an inclination towards the art form.
She started
classical guitar lessons at seven years old and by the time she was nine, it
was clear Grace wanted to sing and perform. Replacing “Schmidhauser” with
“London” (because it’s more memorable and easier to say), a young Grace started
out by playing small coffee shop shows. By middle school, after a brief stint
playing with the pop punk band Residual Kid and auditioning for America’s Got
Talent, she was a fully fledged songwriter and established musician in the
Austin scene. However, Grace thinks that her young age definitely had a certain
degree of influence on her early success.
“When you’re a
nine year old girl, people are going to be really nice to you either way,” she
explained. “People think you’re kind of cute and it’s kind of a novelty.”
Novelty act or
not, Grace was certainly talented and has worked to make the difficult transition
to becoming a performer who will be taken seriously. Taking a year off from
performing during her freshman year, Grace refined her writing skills and
worked on developing her music to new levels of maturity. She also chose not to
capitalize on her age anymore at this point, something she could have easily
done as thirteen and fourteen year old girl. Grace also had to get used to
being treated as an older performer, not a child who got compliments thrown at
her every time she took the stage, competing for attention against other adult musicians,
trying to be taken seriously, and not being seen as “just good for her age.”
“I was kind of
used to people constantly praising me and being really nice,” Grace admitted.
Grace, only
sixteen and already with a seven year long and counting musical career, has
only one year of high school left. Although there is that certain amount of
uncertainty that’s present in all upcoming seniors’ lives, Grace knows for sure
that she will continue to write music and pursue a career in the music industry,
though perhaps not exclusively in performing.
“There’s so
many jobs in the music industry and I don’t want to limit myself to just
performing aspects of it,” she said. “Songwriting for other people is something
I’d be really interested in.”
It was a New York University summer music
program that she went to last year that made Grace aware of the many options
that she had as a musician. At the program Having a steady job-whether
songwriting, producing, or music journalism, she realized, allows her to
continue to perform and make music without having to compromise any of its
artistic integrity to make money. Now she plans to go to college not just for
music, but also for business, songwriting, and production, or perhaps get an
internship somewhere where she can learn the skills necessary to be successful
in the music business and make connections in the industry. While she is
interested in other aspects of the music business, Grace still plans to write
music and perform after high school.
“I definitely want to continue to pursue a
career in performing but I don’t want to limit myself,” she said.
When asked if she thought she was a
successful musician at the present moment, Grace stuttered. Of course, relative
to other sixteen-year-olds, she is. She has a booking agent and a website, a
Spotify page and an album review in the Austin Chronicle. However, if you hold
her to the definition of success that many people have-fame, money, playing
sold out arenas every night-she hasn’t even made a dent. However, Grace says
that that’s not her definition of success, it was what she wanted when she was
younger but not anymore.
“I don’t know, I’ve accomplished a lot
of things that I’ve wanted to by this point in my life,” she said. “I wouldn’t
call myself a successful musician but I think that I’ve been successful in
trying to grow in my music and working really hard on it and making sure that
I’m setting myself up to pursue that later on in my life.”
Check out Grace’s music of iTunes, Bandcamp, Spotify, and
gracelondon.com
No comments:
Post a Comment