FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD – Life is Gonna Be Great!

Life is Gonna Be Great! (single) cover art

Let me share a little bit about this song. I was inspired to write it in hopes of uplifting a friend who was just coming out of some trying times, and things were finally looking up. She was at the light at the end of the tunnel. For any of us, really, I believe that our lives can be whatever we want them to be if we know what we want and stay focused and positive, although I am well aware of what a challenge that can be sometimes! So, even I am inspired by this song, where I remind myself to stay positive on those days when I forget that life is what I make it.

About the recording: I recorded this at The Tempermill studio in Ferndale, Michigan with my clan of trusted peeps: Brett Lucas producing and on guitars, Jim Kissling engineering, Todd Glass on drums, and a talented young’un from the East side, Alex Lyon, on bass. I gotta give Brett credit for coming up with the idea to have the vocal parts overlapping in a “round” at the end, and making the chords work for that. It’s very cool. I like it a lot, and no doubt Jim Kissling is a conscientious and patient master of mixing to get a good mix with a whole bunch of vocal parts and harmonies all happening at the same time there.

About the art: My husband, photographer Chris Farina, shows his talents by capturing this action shot. Late in the day, we went out to a nearby lake on one of the summer-like days we had in mid March in Michigan. I think it was about 80 degrees (F) that day!  Chris took pictures from a ladder while I stood in the shallow water, wearing shorts, and threw up flowers. Then I’d gather up the wet flowers and do it again, and again, all the while doing my best to look happy, like I wasn’t worried about my hair, the wind and the angle. However, I was really happy with how the pictures turned out. Chris did a great job, and the warm light of the low sun is really nice, and I think this picture really captures the spirit of this song.

Lyrics: Life is Gonna Be Great!

Life is gonna be great (gray ay ay ay ate)
Can’t you see, I just radiate (ray ay ay ay diate)
Now I’m dustin’ off my wings
I’ll go hovering high up there
‘Cause now I’ve shaken off the weight I don’t need
and I’m free and clear
Without any fear

(Chorus)
Here I go ’cause my life’s taking off
There’s no ceiling, I broke down the walls
I’m on fire, I can’t be rattled
I’m on top, I’ve won my battles
Here I go ’cause my life’s taking off

(Verse 2)
In myself I’ve got faith (fay ay ay aith)
Dreams are meant to be chased (chay ay ay ay ased)
Bright red carpet’s rolling out
Things unfolding so naturally
And now I’m revving up for
These days to come so excitedly
No limits on me

(Repeat Chorus)
(Bridge)
Oh, how I’ve waited for this to come around
Been such a long time coming, I’m ready now
(Repeat Chorus)

© 2012 Come Shine Music, SESAC; © 2012 Jr. Flip Music, ASCAP

Follow Angela Predhomme on Facebook | Angela’s official website: www.angelapredhomme.com

Saturday, February 25th: Plymouth Coffee Bean Company
in downtown Plymouth, MI (my home town!)
with Tracy Kash Thomas and Tamara Finlay
8:00 – 11:00pm

Thursday, March 1st: The Brighton Bar & Grille
Brighton, MI
covers and originals 7:00 – 10:00pm

Sunday, March 11th: Crazy Wisdom - Ann Arbor, MI
Ann Arbor Alive’s “Folk It” radio show – Live streaming broadcast
with guitarist John E. Lawrence
Performance and interview, hosted by Tom Saunders
Come and be part of the audience for the live broadcast!
6:00 – 7:30pm

In other news, I’m happy to report that there IS indeed other news. News that makes me feel validated by the powers that be in the music business. News that makes me feel like I must be doing something right!

First, two of my songs, This Might Be Good, and My New Favorite Song, have been added to rotation on New York’s WKZE, 98.1 FM. I’m very appreciative of their willingness to play unsigned music. There’s a lot of good stuff out there you never heard, believe me, and this station is awesome enough to play it.

Next, I was notified that at least one of my songs was sent for possible use by contestants on NBC’s The Voice this season. I don’t know anything about which song or if or when, and I won’t know anything until later, but nonetheless, it’s a good thing. Apparently, that’s how this stuff works. The fact that my songs can stand out from thousands of others makes me feel like all the effort I put into songwriting has paid off.

And because of this development, I’m being featured on Detroit’s WWJ media on Friday, Feb. 24th. There will be a 1-2 minute news segment about me on First Forecast Mornings TV show between 5 and 7am that day, and also something will run in the morning on WWJ radio, one of the biggest AM stations in Detroit. Not bad, huh? I can’t complain!

Follow future performances and news on this blog and on my Facebook page

Angela Predhomme website

I had a nice, restful  holiday, and I’m going into the new year with optimism. My music is positioned to grow wings and fly to new places around the globe through channels like Tinderbox Music, Naz-Sect Publishing, Muzak, Crucial Music, Pandora, and various international radio stations, both terrestrial and streaming. I’m also recording a few new songs, and although they’re not quite done yet, they’re sounding really good so far.

Live shows planned include an intimate little gig at

The Plymouth Coffee Bean, the hippest coffee shop in Plymouth, Michigan on Saturday, February 25th, with Tracy Kash Thomas,

and a streaming Internet show on Sunday, March 11th at 6pm broadcast through Ann Arbor Alive radio.

More to come! Have a great January!

Angela

Lately, I’ve been focusing on writing short songs to pitch for national TV commercials.

Here are a couple I’ve done recently:

This one is for a TV commercial that is looking for a nostalgic song about looking back with fondness on love and family. I call it “Warming All My Days,” and I’m really happy with how it turned out.
Click to hear “Warming All My Days.”
(special thanks to my cousin-in-law Allen for giving us the guitar I’m playing on this track! And thanks to my daughter Brie for letting me use it!)

Here’s another one that I wrote for an advertisement for quick and healthy meals, which features a working couple enjoying dinner at home.
Click to hear “So Easy.”

The competition is huge, but I’m doing my best. We’ll see if something gets used sooner or later, but in the meantime, I’ll continue to write music for both my next album and for whatever commercial opportunities present themselves.

All songs above copyright 2011, Come Shine Music, SESAC.

Visit Angela’s website at www.angelapredhomme.com

It was really a great experience, and we had beautiful weather in the European-like city of Montreal, Quebec for the 2011 Film Festival.

The premiere of the film took place on a Tuesday at noon, and we counted about 50 people in the theatre, Latin Quarter Cineplex off of Rue St. Denis in Montreal. It was a huge thrill to hear my song, “This Might Be Good,” play at the end of the movie, coming in in a key part of the last scene and continuing through the credits. I heard the song through a state-of-the-art movie theater sound system, and it was really satisfying to hear that the professional mixing and mastering on this track (by the awesome Jim Kissling of The Tempermill Studio) paid off. This song was recorded under the direction and unstoppable talent of Brett Lucas, guitarist and producer.

The film had 4 showings over 5 days, and by Saturday, the final showing, the theater was full! Apparently, the word spread!  Everyone involved with the film was really happy with the splash the movie made at the film festival.

I gotta tell ya, being part of it was every bit as exciting and fun and you would imagine. It was an experience I’ll never forget, and Montreal is a place I will get back to one day. It’s a wonderful, charming city. And people there were very familiar with my French last name!

We all hope that wider distribution of the film will follow, but these things take time and the right channels. I applaud Trevor Garlick and everyone at Trinity X Productions for their dedication and perseverance with getting their first feature film out there. It is definitely not an easy task, but Trevor is a pro. Filmmaking is as competitive as music, no doubt. But we creative types must keep the faith in ourselves and our work, and with persistence, a quality product, and some serious grit, we know that lesser-known artists of any medium CAN achieve success, one step at a time.

Here are some pics:

Place des Arts. This is the view from the Hyatt's patio, the hotel where the film festival was based.

The director of the film A Wedding Most Strange along with a few cast members did a Q & A with the audience after the screening. From left, Trevor Garlick, Kaye Quinley, Louise Houghton, Valary Sanders, and a film festival facilitator.

Outdoor movie screen at the Place des Arts in downtown Montreal.

Follow on the web:

Angela Predhomme – Facebook

A Wedding Most Strange – Facebook

Angela Predhomme website

A Wedding Most Strange – IMDB

Buy the song “This Might Be Good” on iTunes or  Order a CD

I’m headed from the Detroit area up to Montreal for the world premiere of the independent British film “A Wedding Most Strange.” My song, “This Might Be Good,” is the song that plays as the end credits roll in this full length feature film by British filmmaker Trevor Garlick of the award-winning Trinity X Productions. How exciting!

The festival is a step in securing wider distribution for the film, and hopefully it will be showing in the U.S. in the coming months.

Well, I’ve got to pack now. Stay tuned for some pics after the festival!

Follow on Facebook:

A Wedding Most Strange

Angela Predhomme

A Wedding Most Strange – IMDB

We did this performance as part of a live music summer concert series last week. It was a lot of fun! This song features John Rhoades on guitar and me, Angela Predhomme, on vocals.

Check it out! Without blues, there would be no rock and roll!

Follow future performances and news on this blog and on my Facebook music page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Angela-Predhomme/32121454905

These guys are people I had known for a very long time. They had been coming over to practice in my parents’ basement since I had been in high school. I knew them pretty well. During a rehearsal for my debut gig, one of them said to me, “Are you sure you want to do this? It can be rough out there. At some point, somebody might yell out ‘you suck!!’ or something else mean, because sometimes at bars people can get out of hand. Can you handle that?” And actually, I don’t remember what my response was, but it was probably something like “I think I’ll be OK,” because I did go out and perform, ready for whatever.

I’m happy to say that in my several years of performing music now, no one has ever yelled out “You suck!” Thank goodness. That would be horrible, wouldn’t it?

So, that said, I will be “not sucking” on Thursday, July 14^th at the Fountain Walk Mall in Novi, Michigan from 5pm – 8pm, with guitarist John Rhoades, formerly of the touring blues band Motor City Josh. John will also be not sucking, because I don’t think that’s possible. He’s quite good at what he does. We’ll be in the center court of this wonderful outdoor mall playing covers and originals, and it’s free. So come and check it out if you can!

Here’s a link with directions: Directions to Novi’s Fountain Wall Mall

Singer-songwriter Angela Predhomme’s 2011 album, Don’t Wonder, is available through iTunes and other digital retailers. CDs are available from Angela’s website.

This takes me to songwriting. Unlike music theory, which is pretty cut and dry, there are a lot of different schools of thought about writing songs, and a lot of different opinions. A lot has been written, taught and discovered about songwriting, and there is as much variety within one genre as there is variety between genres. There are people who see it as a pure “art,” and others who make a living at it, and probably a rare few who make a living while embracing the purist, personal-expression angle.

A successful songwriter once said to me that amateurs write what they want to say, but professionals write what people want to hear. Purists might be appalled by this, yet there is definitely truth to it. This balance is something I am continually juggling. Would I like to have my songs become widely known and loved? Sure, I would. It would be a lie if I said that I’m writing music solely for my own personal expression. If that were the case, the songs wouldn’t get out of my living room.

The thought of my living room brings me to an interesting show I saw on VH1 recently. I don’t watch much TV, but I did check out their “Storytellers” series with Ray LaMontagne. What I thought was so fascinating about Mr. LaMontagne was that he comes off as a pure “artist,” yet he is commercially successful. Although he said he didn’t have an image, I thought that he clearly does have an image as the disheveled, edgy, sometimes tortured artist-musician who expresses his innermost feelings to the world. At least that’s how we’re supposed to perceive him, right?

Now, I’m not saying that this artist IS exactly who this image portrays, or not. I have no idea. Ray and I don’t hang out, so what he’s really like is completely unknown to me. But it reminded me that even though many very successful songwriters write what people want to hear (and it’s usually based in truth somewhere), it seems like people WANT desperately to believe that they intimately know the singer-songwriter. They want to believe that the singer is completely opening up and expressing, and broadcasting her or his innermost self to the public.

The psychology behind this could be fairly complex, and I don’t claim to be an expert. Maybe it’s like reality TV, and people want to gawk at others’ drama in order to appreciate that their own lives aren’t so bad. This could be it, but my personal theory of why people want so much to hear others’ emotional catharses and expression is the same reason why we buy greeting cards. People cannot always express themselves easily, and so if their love, hate, excitement, revenge, or general drama is succinctly expressed by a singer in three and a half minutes, then they feel a strong connection because they can relate. The singer has expressed the listener’s feelings FOR the listener, and maybe the listener could not have put it out there so clearly (and with rhymes, I might add). Just like a Hallmark card, but with a face and name and public image, and so the human connection feels so real.

So, I’m currently at the place in my own songwriting journey where I seek a balance: I carefully choose WHAT to pour my heart out about. For example, I could write a bunch of songs that are down on the “system,” or down on this or that. It’s no secret that the world needs some fixing. I mean, look at Gaddafi. What is he thinking? Mean dictators are so “last century.”

Seriously though, I try to write lyrics that are from my heart, but that will connect with other people, and are socially responsible. This is easier said than done, but this is what I’ve learned so far and where I’m at, and I hope to keep getting better as a songwriter. I hope to connect with people through music and uplift them with a great tune, or maybe help them to heal when they need it. I am happy to hopefully be the audio greeting card that reaches into people’s hearts and moves them to a better place, so that we can all grow together.

In fact, I love to write a good melodic hook so much that I had written this exact one before. Back in 2009, I had written a song called “When I Make It” for the possibility of an American Idol-type use, with other artists in mind to sing it. I sent this song around, and nobody raved about it or jumped on it, and so I just shelved the song. However, that melody in the chorus was something I really, really liked. So, a year later, I took that melody and created the chorus of “My New Favorite Song.” I tried different lyric ideas, but I was really drawn to just keeping the chorus just “doo doo doo, etc.,” and so I crafted the lyrics around that.

I have many little pieces of would-be songs as 20-second recordings, and one of them I made into the verse for this song. I had the tune and lyrics, “I’m just swimming in ecstasy,” and I thought that was an intriguing first line, but I didn’t have much else. I worked these two parts (verse and chorus) so they’d go together lyrically to set up the “doo doo doo” in the chorus, and voila, I had a really cool little song!

This makes it sound easy. It wasn’t. Generally, I slave over these things with tenacity and persistence, until they are good enough that the songs will jump out and grab the listener.

This particular song went through 3 different melodies in the bridge section during the songwriting process, and I ended up with this one after working with an LA song “coach” and the contributions of the album’s producer and guitarist, Brett Lucas. It was Brett’s idea, too, to do a section with hand claps after the bridge, and to make the song have a surf or beach party feel.  We toyed with the idea of using a ukulele on it, but being trendy isn’t a priority to me, and I trusted that we could do great music with a traditional band of guitar, bass, drums and piano. Chuck Bartels did an especially awesome job with the bouncy bassline, and as always, Todd Glass is holding it all together on drums.

For the clapping part after the chorus, I set up my girls, Gabrielle and Clarice, with headphones and a mic, and they did a great job.

Overall, we got a finished product that is a fun, memorable and catchy pop song, and I’m happy to have it on my album.

My New Favorite Song (click to listen)

I’m just swimming in ecstasy
Every time you pull me close
Last night seems like a dream to me
Here’s what I remember most
We could hear that music playing loud out on the town
Can’t recall the words, but darlin’, that’s my new favorite song

(chorus)
It went like
doo doo doo…
Doo doo doo…
…my favorite song

(verse 2)
You’re front row for my fantasy
You’re making it all unfold
Last night it became clear to me
You and I from the same mold
And we were free and flying on the sound of that sweet song
Oh it felt so good when you and I were singing along

(chorus)
It felt like
doo doo doo…
Doo doo doo…
…my favorite song

(bridge)
Now that melody plays on and on in my head
Taking me straight back to that charmed night that we had

(break w/ hand claps)
(repeat chorus)

© 2011 Come Shine Music, SESAC; Jr. Flip Music, ASCAP

“My New Favorite Song” is part of singer-songwriter Angela Predhomme’s 2011 album, Don’t Wonder, and is available through iTunes and other digital retailers. CDs are available from Angela’s website.