I currently sing at Alley Catz Club, The Aussie WoolShed and FlyGearZ.
To be very honest, I feel humbled that people enjoy hearing me sing. I try to use my voice to tell the song. I guess that might sound a little silly. But to me a song is a story. Someone has taken the time to put into words things that they were feeling at the time. Yes, some songs don’t make a lot of sense, I agree. But when you look deeper there is still a story to tell either just from the words written or maybe from the time it was written. It has been said that a singer is an interpreter and I think in this respect that is true.
I give an awful lot of myself to you during a show. I laugh and I chat. Yes, sometimes I even make a fool of myself. As many people know, there are times during a show where, after singing a few songs, my brain almost forgets how to talk. And then the jewels come out lol.
Some songs make me so happy when I sing them and some of my songs nearly always bring me to tears. Why sing the sad one’s? I sing them because I love feeling emotions and I love making you feel emotions too. You spend time with me, listening to me and feeling what I feel and during that time I open myself up and lay everything bare. To be a good performer means that I have to be very vulnerable because, I personally feel, that’s when I am at my best.
So here is a little about the other side of me. I love to sing. My first memories of actually singing are as a child in a church quoir. Yes, I was one of those kids who wore the funny black cassocks and the white shirts standing at the front of the church. In those days I was a child soprano although, to me, that was nothing special. But as the years went by I continued to sing, mainly in my room, with records playing that my Parents hated. I was very shy and, in some ways, I am still a shy person. This is the main reason I never joined a band. I never learnt to play an instrument so I would never have been able to blend into the background at gigs. As even more time past I joined the Army and after 20 years service I began to feel the need to be in a band but most pub bands, at that time, were rock bands and I just don’t have that type of voice. Behind JP is a guy, who in Real Life, is exactly the same as the way you find him in SL in the way he thinks, feels and communicates.