Conversations with Christine Alice

Today we’d like to introduce you to Christine Alice.

Hi Christine, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
There I was, working a 9-5 Monday-Friday job with benefits, guaranteed pay, retirement plan…” Living The Dream.” I grew up the daughter of a garbage man and a teacher. So while we were never hungry the money wasn’t exactly pouring in, but my parents made it work. To have a secure career path in place was a lifelong aspiration of mine and something I felt was always important. I had achieved just that and thought I had it figured out working a sales job, but low and behold, something was deeply missing and I felt like I was living week to week just waiting for the weekend or the coveted few days of vacation a year so I could escape.

As a young person, I always thought that I would be a singer someday, but as I grew older it seemed so far-fetched and unrealistic. Not to mention that my senior year of high school I started having issues with my voice and had figured that I would be unable to professionally sing anyway. So I went to Colorado State University and got a degree. Then after graduating, I took a trip through South America to get the travel bug out of my system before I joined “the real world.” I had found myself at the bottom of the world, in a small village in southern Chile, I met a guitarist at a hostel and started singing with him just for fun. He invited me to sing with him at his gig just down the road. Never having done this before I was very excited and I had the time of my life! The crowd went wild over the music and I felt more alive than I think ever before.

After that experience, I resolved that I would have to learn guitar and get my voice issue figured out so that I could make performance a regular occurrence. I joined YoutUbiversity and learned guitar. I started taking voice lessons and it turns out that I was just holding too much tongue tension and nothing besides my technique was an issue. Silly me. I eventually started performing for open mics and then was offered gigs. Then more gigs and I was turning gigs down because I had work the next day and didn’t want to be too tired for work. After 4 years I doing this, the world was struck by the largest disaster since WWIII. COVID. I was having the strangest nightmares and was mentally/emotionally disturbed by the pandemic. Not because I was scared to die, or because I was lonely, or worried about the economy; no, I was terrified that I would die without living my purpose. To sing.

After weighing my options and income potential, I resolved that no matter the outcome, I needed to take a risk. I quit my job, the one with benefits, quality pay, and a 401k, and began to call myself a professional musician with no benefits, no guarantees of anything, and never feeling more empowered. Three years later, Sugar Beats, my business is thriving and I feel like I live with meaning every day. I still wait for the weekends not because it’s an opportunity to escape but because I get to come alive and share my purpose with the world. I have found a revived connotation of “the real world” and “living the dream.”

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Oh, there have been bumps along this road the whole time. During the years while I worked the sales career-oriented job but was trying to etch out a musician’s lifestyle, I often felt hopeless and lost. I couldn’t see the path or the finish line so it seemed like an unsurmountable journey. My best friend’s words of encouragement were, “You don’t need to know where the path goes to start going down it.”

I used to think that the only way to have a music career was to become Taylor Swift or Beyonce, but now that I’ve been a full-time musician for a bit, I see that there are a million and 2 ways to make a living with music. I often have to remind myself that I’m creating a life and it’s not always easy or clear to find the right direction to go. It’s always a gamble but fortune favors the bold.

People often say that it’s a tough business, and while that’s true, I would choose this life over a life that’s not mine to steer 98% of the time.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Most of what I do revolves around live performance. I play acoustic guitar and sing my little heart out. It’s a simple setup where I perform mostly covers but throw in originals throughout the sets. I started writing music seriously when an opportunity to write for a local short film fell in my lap. “Chords,” directed by Emmy Award-winning cinematographer John Barnhardt, went around the world and won accolades at several film festivals in a multitude of categories including best original soundtrack and score. I also acted in the film so it was fun to stretch my creativity.

Barnhardt and I have become great friends and we love working together so he invited me to work on a documentary surrounding the life and works of Dr Temple Grandin. I wrote part of the score and the soundtrack for this full feature. I’m preparing to release an EP of my more country/folk style music that I wrote for both films. I hope to finish another EP with my radically different style of music which is everything from pop/rap to alternative dark music.

I suppose what sets me apart from other artists is my voice and the way I arrange and interpret the songs I cover. I’m very proud of the music I write and I think it’s a unique expression of my life experiences and how I perceive the world

What matters most to you?
Wow! That’s a big question. I suppose it’s always in flux. Priorities shift on a moment-to-moment basis. Family, friends, my dog, and my health are always near the tippy top of what matters most.

In terms of my music and career…I want to be fulfilled and be constantly inching or leaping toward a better me and contributing to the greater good. I want to help others realize their dreams and open doors for others as others have done for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: ChristineAliceMusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christinealicemusic/?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christineAliceMusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1Ei1qbel5LJuPrpl1ef6kA

Image Credits
Dana Paige, Scott Allen, Jasmine Mallo, Kevin Michael, John Barnhardt, and Gii Astorga