A friend of mine is planning a trip to Finland this year, so we got talking about it, as he has never been there before. For me, Finland will always be a special country, the first country in Europe that I visited and the one that catapulted my career into Europe in many ways.
After entering my song "Someday" into a blues songwriting contest, I was narrowed down over weeks of voting, to the semi finals. The only woman and the only Canadian, I was flown to Finland to compete and ended up winning the competition on July 1st at the Puistoblues Festival. What a ride it was, and at that time it could not have come at a better time, since I had just come out of an abusive 8 year relationship. I would return the following year to sing at the festival again, as part of the competition prize, and soon after a promoter in Germany saw one of my videos on YouTube and hired me to sing at his festival in Schoppingen, Germany which would lead to me meeting Henrik Freischlader (my later friend, producer and record label owner), as well as landing my first agent in Germany. The rest, is history...
Here is a video from the semi finals of the blues songwriting contest, in a dark bar in Finland back in 2007. :)