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Just Plain Beautiful Voice!

Member Valerie DeLaCruz is a great example of how it is never to late to take your career to the next level. As you will learn in the story below, she has always been talented, but her music moved to the side of the road for a time while something called life took over for a bit. However, she has kicked it into overdrive, and it seems to be paying off in spades! I had met Valerie on line several times and gotten to know her fairly well before I ever got to hear her music. But before I put the CD in the player, I knew it was going to be great. I knew it would be professionally done, the songs elegantly chosen and the voice would be precise and beautiful. Sometimes you just get that from chatting with a person and getting to know them. So when I got the CD, entitled "My Girlfriends Quilt" I put it in and my instincts were proven true. It was indeed Classy, Elegant and Beautiful.

When Valerie DeLaCruz was growing up, her family and friends were certain she would become an artist. Her obvious ability in the visual arts made it seem clear that would be her calling. Well, Valerie has in fact become an artist--a musical artist. "I love drawing," says Valerie. "It's as natural as breathing to me. But so is singing, and nothing gives me the immediate feeling of joy I get when I'm singing."

As a child growing up in the shadow of upstate New York's majestic Adirondack Mountains, Valerie would sit on her mother's hope chest on the second-floor landing, inventing her own harmonies to songs she heard on the radio. Her grandfather, a fiddle player, often took her to the local record store to pick out any single she wanted.

Valerie was performing her own music as early as age 15, when she opened for Johnny Rivers when he came through her town. As a teenager, she played guitar and sang in several acoustic harmony acts and worked as a solo performer as well. She then put her guitar away for a while fronted a series of bands. One of the first bands she sang in fired her for "lack of stage presence." By the time she played a cocktail party prior to a Liza Minnelli show years later, Valerie had learned her lesson well. "It's not enough simply to have a good voice, or have your material down cold," she explains. "You've got to have something you can communicate in the music. You have to connect with every member of your audience, one by one." I can attest after hearing her music, that she has learned this lesson well!

Living in Boston after attending the Art Institute of Boston, Valerie toured the New England club circuit as a front singer for a top 40 lounge act, then an R'n'B funk band that had her singing covers from Aretha Franklin and Chaka Khan, and then a country rock band. For many years she sang with a variety of small jazz groups, honing her vocal chops. Today Valerie has come back full circle to her acoustic roots, writing and recording original songs. She cites Nashville songwriters Kim Richey, Angela Kaset, and Beth Nielson-Chapman as current influences.

For a while Valerie's music took a back seat as she developed a successful commercial interior design business, got married and began raising two children, Alessandra and Michael, with her husband Joe. But music kept calling her back. "I started making regular trips to Nashville to learn more about the craft of songwriting," Valerie says. She joined organizations like the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI), BMI and Nashville Entertainment Association (NeA) to develop contacts and skills. "Singing is the easy part; expressing yourself through great songs that people can relate to is the challenge."

In 1997, she recorded a self-titled CD in Nashville with producer Mark Oliverius, keyboard player for Joe Diffie. She completed her second CD, "My Girlfriends Quilt," with Mark producing in Nashville, and Gary Tash recording vocals and overdubs in Troy, NY. Mark is currently on tour with Lorrie Morgan.

Her hard work is beginning to pay off. One of her songs, "You're the Happy Ending," won First Prize in the USA Songwriting Competition, Country Category in 1997 She received the 1997 Songwriter of the Year Award from the Northeast Country Music Association, as well as nominations for Female Vocalist of the Year and Song of the Year for "You're the Happy Ending." And she's been selected as 1998 Songwriter of the Year and Song of the Year for "Hey, That's My Kiss," at this year's awards show. She was a finalist in the Levi's Acoustic Talent Search for the Lilith Fair Tour and showcased at the event in New York City at Levi's flagship store on 57th Street.

Valerie got together with a couple of other singer/songwriter friends for an informal jam session and they discovered that they have consecutive birthdays! March 10, 11 and 12....so she joined with Corley Roberts and Kim Buckley to present a series of concerts titled the Pisces Girls Tour. Currently, they co-host a weekly radio show featuring singer-songwriters on WRPI 91.5fm college radio station on Sundays from 8-10am.

I got a lot out of NSAI (Nashville Songwriters Association International.) in these ways:

1. Attending Song Camp 201 (this is the advanced camp working intensely with moneymaking songwriters, including our pal Ralph Murphy)

2. Making networking connections with the other songwriters, who were generally at a higher level in their career and ability than most *amatuers*

3. Establishing a mentor relationship with Jon Ims ("She's In Love With the Boy") where for $40 per hour, I can go to his house and have song critiques and ask endless questions!!! This is fabulous and he is a very generous teacher with specific critiques, not vague ones.

4. Being able to say you are a member is almost a prerequisite with many publishers, especially when they know you are from out of town. The first thing they say is, "You have to move here." The second is, "you need to join a songwriting organization like NSAI" (ED NOTE: Soon, they'll be saying "you need to join Just Plain Folks!")

5. The Spring Symposium...much like TAXI Road Rally, but obviously more geared toward the country market, with opportunities to pitch to actual publishers!!! (April)