The Musician
Jenna Clark
Many musicians choose to move to Los Angeles to pursue a music career, but Jenna Clark decided to move to North Texas from Central Florida six years ago.
"The scene was just kind of in the beginnings of seeming to go somewhere," Clark said. "Dallas as a whole has grown substantially since I've moved here, so I've been very lucky."
Throughout her career, the 27-year-old has been motivated to write music by "shortcomings of life" and how people feel over things that happen in their life.
A few of the artist's Clark looks up to include Etta James, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Norah Jones, who she says she hopes to open for one day.
Clark's first performance was at a talent show hosted by her middle school, where she played the only song she said she knew on guitar, Stand By Me by Ben E. King.
"It was terrible, absolutely terrible," she said laughing. "But I tried."
Clark did not get back on stage until a few years later and when she started performing again, it was 'shaky'. Although she has smoothed some of it out, she said anxiety still creeps up sometimes.
"It's a gradual process and the venues will hopefully just get bigger and that anxiety never really goes away cause that's part of it, facing your fear," Clark said.
Many musicians have their favorite on-stage performances and usually it's a performance the artist considers their 'best' performance.
For Clark, one of her favorite performances was a time her tuner broke. She then had to tune her guitar by ear in front of a sold out show at The Kessler Theatre.
"Recovering from that moment within that performance was pretty interesting. I was very proud," she said.
Clark has a few favorite songs she likes to perform because they feel different every time she plays them.
Aside from some of her own songs, she said she enjoys performing older songs from artists like Etta James.
"I sing 'Sunday Kind of Love' sometimes, and it's just pretty incredible to watch through the crowd different people of different ages and all of different places and experiences recognizing one song in particular and connecting over that," she said.
As she gets closer to being 30-years-old, Clark said she has made her career less about pleasing other people and more about recounting her actual experiences.
Looking back at some of her older songs she said she doesn't connect with them anymore, helping her improve and head in a different direction with her songwriting.
"There's just less and less of holding on to reputation so much, and just holding on to what I feel is true to me, and realizing it's not going to be the same for everyone," Clark said.
Although there are many musicians in her family, she is part of a small handful who have tried to pursue it professionally.
Starting a career in the music industry is not easy and because of that, Clark said she is blessed and thankful for her parents support.
"It was one of those things that I told myself and told everybody since I was a kid that's what i was gonna do, and that what I did," she said.
After working on it for two and a half years, Clark will release her first album by the end of 2018 and an EP soon after that.
She said she has enjoyed the learning process and hopes to keep it "sustainable one way or another."
You can listen to Clark's music on her Spotify page, and find a few of her live performances on her Facebook page and YouTube.
Women in Competition
Many women in the mainstream music industry have spoken out about being pitted against each other.
Rivalries among female musicians are usually most common in genres where there is a lack of women, such as rap, rock and jazz.
These rivalries are usually created by the media and other times by fans who say they are defending their favorite artist.
Jenna Clark said she has noticed the opposite within female artists in the Dallas area.
Despite being sure that women are sometimes pitted against each other, Clark said there is a substantial amount of support among the artists she knows and has worked with.
"Somebody was saying to me recently 'if you stay in your lane no one will get in your way'," she said. "So it really just goes back to not caring what other people think and doing your own thing."
The Musical Director and Vocal Coach
Rebecca Lowrey
Rebecca Lowrey has played piano since she was five years old. At one point she thought she would play the piano all day long as a career in the future.
Lowrey grew up in Garland, but went to school in Abilene where she earned her bachelors degree in music with a minor in business at the Hardin-Simmons University.
Today she works as a vocal coach and musical director in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
When she was a young girl, Lowrey's mother signed her and her sister up for as many activities as she could: sports, dance class, choir and piano lessons. Although she was told her sister had more 'natural' talent playing piano, Lowrey is the one stuck with it.
"When it got hard I would try to convince my mom that it was too hard that I didn't want to go on, but she said 'why don't you just try it for a couple of more months'," she said. "I'm so glad she did cause I've kept up with it and I can't remember not playing the piano."
As she was growing up, Lowrey was always looking for opportunities to play piano. At only 12-years-old she played piano in her first musical. She accompanied her band director in the version of 'Sound of Music' that required two piano players.
Afterwards, she played the piano in musicals all through out high school, and in college she did a lot of opera shows. A few months after moving back to the DFW area, she booked a job as a music director for a spelling bee at a community college.
Since then, Lowrey has done from 10 to 12 shows which include 'The Rocky Horror Show', 'Toxic Avenger', 'Putting it Together', 'Cabaret', 'Spamalot', 'Music Man', and 'Billy Elliot'.
In the future, Lowrey said she would love to direct 'Waitress' as soon as the copyright for it is available, as well as 'In the Heights' written by Lin Manuel Miranda.
For the last couple of years, Lowrey has been trying to engage more in musicals as a director and is also trying to focus more on vocal coaching.
"The last couple of years I've been kind of rebranding and redoing things and focusing more on vocal coaching side of things," she said. "I've only done three or four shows and I've also started directing more than music directing, but still doing both."
Vocal coaching is something Lowrey fell into unexpectedly. In college, voice students had to bring a pianist to their voice lessons, so she sat through multiple sessions a week with different students.
She then started to pay attention to the vocal coaches teaching techniques and learned a lot through them and it turned into something she said she enjoyed.
As a vocal coach, Lowrey said she is very direct and not "flowery or complementary," but definitely gets excited when its great.
"Auditions are a sore spot for actors because there's a lots of rejection and a lot of blame and nerves they put on themselves," she said. "I love when in a rehearsal I can see them feel prepared and feel confident."
Lowrey has students from a wide range of ages who go to work with her. From seven year olds who are just starting out, to 20 or 30 year olds who are in the community theatre. She also works with 65 year olds who have taken a break to raise their families and want to get back into performing.
If you would like to receive some vocal coaching, you can book an audition prep session with Lowrey for 25 dollars or a master prep class for 35 dollars on her website.
Casting Minorities in Musicals
Rebecca Lowrey said the topic of casting minorities in musicals is currently a huge discussion in the DFW area , and it's something tough to.
As a director if you are picked to do a musical where the cast is historically white, minorities will not show up to that audition.
One of the things Lowrey said directors struggle with is wanting an ethnic cast, but having only a few non-white people show up on audition days.
"If you're wanting to have an ethnic cast, if you're wanting to have a diverse cast, you need to put that out there before you even get to the auditions," Lowrey said.
A wider net needs to be cast in order to bring in more individuals who are minorities to audition. Sometimes, Lowrey said, the shows you pick as a director plays into it as well.
"You need to pick shows where either the ethnicity of the actors, or age of your actors doesn't matter, have some flexibility," she said. "Or pick shows written for a diverse cast."
Today in Broadway, there are new works where age, color and size doesn't matter. The characters in the shows, such as 'In the Heights', 'Hamilton', and 'Groundhog Day', are being written without any defining characteristics.
Knowing it's a two way street, Lowrey said she is trying to help fix that issue by choosing more diverse casts for her shows.
In addition, she also advices minority actors to show up to auditions and prove they are the best and most confident for the role.
The CEO and Voice Coach
Throughout her life, Linda Septien has worked and done many things in the music industry. She was even named the 'Kingpin' of pop talent by the Dallas Observer in 2015.
"She’s a talent whisperer, some would say, though that sounds a little New-Agey for a process that involves meticulous planning and relentless work to create the perfectly designed “organic” moment," the Dallas Observer writer, Christian McPhate wrote in his article.
Septien is the president and CEO of a music artist development company called Septien Entertainment Group (SEG).
Although she had no desire to teach as a life-long career, Septien did enjoy it and started giving vocal lessons, but only for extra money.
Soon after coming home from an opera tour in Italy, Septien headed to Nashville, Tennessee to record a pop album.
"I got in there to record it and they said 'are you going to sing like that?' and I said 'yeah why?' 'well that totally sucked'," she said.
She had the confidence and knew she could sing because she had just gotten off an opera tour, but she was told she had no feelings or an understanding of engaging an audience.
Septien was told to comeback when she had learned how to 'really' sing. She said this interested her because she loves to learn.
She started doing some research by watching how artists like The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, performed and engaged with an audience. Septien started taking notes and before she knew it, she had 20 books of notes filled with her research.
She soon decided to start teaching what she had learned to ten artists she had at the time, and later started launching artists. When she noticed what she was teaching worked, she went on to perform again.
"I went back on tour for just a little bit, but I loved teaching," she said. "Now I only go on tour maybe once a year."
Septien described her teaching style as encouraging, but made it clear that encouragement "comes in different bottles."
"Sometimes encouraging is just saying 'you do not belong in this industry. You're not working hard enough and you're probably not right for this industry and that's okay don't beat yourself over it'," she said.
She advices anyone who wants to be in the music industry to be a self-leader, passionate, and have the ability to earn money while doing it because it is a very expensive industry to get started in.
SEG was founded in 1986 and has its main facility in Carrollton. This building has sound and dance rooms, recording studios, a 50 seat showcase Black Box Theater, three stages, and many more resources.
Although SEG does have some offices in Los Angeles, Septien said she prefers Dallas because she loves Texas. Not only that, but having a facility as big as the one she has in Carrollton would be too expensive in Los Angeles. Septien said she hopes to expand SEG in the future.
Working with Artists Before Fame
Linda Septien has worked with and has helped launch many well-known artists in the pop industry today.
Some of these artists include Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Beyoncé, Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, and Kacey Musgraves.
When she looks back on them, Septien recognizes they were successful endeavors, but said she prefers teaching musicians before they become well known.
"After they become famous they have to change a lot in order to maintain who they are," Septien said. "Its' very very tough because people are taken advantage of quite a bit once they become famous or popular."
Septien likes working with artists before their personalities change, and said she loves doing what she does and prefers it to working with artists who are already popular.
Although she does not have a favorite memory working as a voice coach, Septien said there is one thing about her job she loves.
"The best part of my job is making people's dreams come true," she said.
Linda Septien and Demi Lovato// Source: Linda Septien's Facebook Page