Page 166 - Reason To Sing by Kelita Haverland

Reason To Sing

life. Always, always scrounging for the next gig. Rejection,
dejection, the odd break, rinse and repeat.
This is when I started to seriously think about music again.
Maybe singing and songwriting was the route for me to go?
I called up the musical director of “Godspell” and asked him
to produce my first single. We recorded two original songs at
Master’s Workshop.
Thus began a new and most welcome role for Hudson - my
manager. He leapt at the chance to promote me as a recording
artist. Didn’t matter that we had no clue what we were doing.
We worked hard and just kept learning! Imagine our excitement
as we mailed my newly-pressed single to radio stations across
the country! Even more so when we got a little bit of airplay.
However, we did not set the music world on fire.
I needed to find a direction. I had always been inspired by
female singer/songwriters like Carole King and Carly Simon.
But the 70s were over and that genre wasn’t exactly popular
anymore. I had won a talent show at a pub singing “Help
Me Make It Through the Night” and it seemed people liked
me doing country. Not really my dream but hey, when you’re
desperate for stardom, you do what you need to do. Quite
honestly, country music seemed the closest thing to singer/
songwriter at the time and when I discovered Johnny Cash’s
daughter, Rosanne, I knew I was on to something! And Juice
Newton. Those two women were crossing over from country
to pop and racing up both sets of charts. I was super inspired!
The next step was to record an album and shop it. After being
turned down by every major label in Toronto and Nashville,
I was finally signed by Boot Records, a small independent
company owned by Stompin’ Tom Connors.
The album was financed by inheritance from my dear late
parents. Yes, we personally floated the whole shebang because

152