Day 30 of a Photo a Day: Valois

I love my band.

Valois has changed my life in such a positive way.

Years ago, before Valois grew into the full band that it is now and before my badass bandmate Megan Miller (the vacuum queen in today's photo) joined her super excellent band And The Kids, she was playing keyboards in her room alone. She definitely played music with her friends, but she hadn't yet found the project that would make use of her extreme talent. Eventually, she did, and since then she and ATK have grown into something so beautiful. Mind you, I only met her after ATK was established and pretty grown, but I can venture a guess that there was some positive self-growth along the way because of how amazing she is today.

Charles Hoppner has been writing brilliantly creative music for many years. Back when he was in high school, he was in a band called Hester writing cool originals with Valois drummer/apple of my eye Don Rankin!

Charlie and Megan had collaborated in the production of the album Love Dies But You Won't, and had been talking about bringing some other musicians into the mixture in order to become a full band and start doing live performances. Megan asked Charlie if he knew anyone who reminded him of the former Megan--someone who had talent and ideas and creativity, but who hadn't yet found an outlet where they could express and utilize all of that. Charlie thought of me and gave me a ring-a-ding-ding on the old Samsung.

From there, I learned how to play keyboards (sort of), how to better collaborate when writing music, how to be more comfortable in front of an audience, and so many different awesome and useful things. Getting together with Megan and Charlie this weekend and practicing and creating--even though we lacked our very attractive and talented drummer--was amazing. For one, I missed the hell out of these two silly geniuses, but it was also so good to be working on music again.

This photo was the bright idea of camera/spotlight-loving Charlie and Shannon, while the humble/trill as hell Megan tried to vacuum in peace. I love it so much. I love you both so much. I hope you have an idea of how important you are to me.

#PhotoaDay