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Vocalist
reaches out with CD
Frances L. Drost always
is seeking the deeper meaning.
The North Newton Twp. singer,
songwriter and pianist may find it in her garden,
during an auction or while watching her beloved
older sister's plane take off for Canada.
She even has found it in the death of two of her
brothers.
Whatever the source, the
message finds its way into her music.
For years, Drost, 34, has
shared her music and messages by playing and singing
at weddings, church functions and the occasional
concert, and has been a back-up vocalist, an instrumentalist
and an arranger on recordings of other area artists.
She is reaching for a much
wider audience with her newly released debut CD,
"Under the Big Blue Sky," on which she
performs 10 of her original songs.
There may be some digitally
mixed destiny at work here.
"I had an interest
in music as a kid. We always had some kind
of music playing in our house," said Drost,
who launched the CD with a free concert last night
at Green Spring Brethren in Christ Church.
"My Mom saw me playing things I heard on
the piano, so she started me taking piano lessons."
Those lessons quickly took
hold, but the idea of making music a career didn't
gel for quite a while.
"For years I worked
as a secretary in a bank, and I just hated it.
I did other things but I could never find my niche,"
Drost said. "Then more and more doors
started opening to music. Music gives me
the most fulfillment, so a few years ago I thought,
'Why not do what you love for a living?"
"Under the Big Blue
Sky" is something of a child of circumstance,
an offshoot of a musical gift Drost planned for
her sister and brother.
"I had the idea to
do birthday CDs for them when they turned 40 a
few years ago," Drost said. "I
wrote my own songs for that. The people
in the studio felt I was writing stuff that people
would love. It just evolved from there."
Financial backing for "Under
the Big Blue Sky" came via a scholarship
from an anonymous donor. The studio work
with David C. Levy of Chambersburg, who produced
and arranged the album, took eight meticulous
months.
"This is my first
major project with my own songs. It's pretty
much me." Drost said.
"I'd have to say the
title song is my favorite. I wrote it for
my sister and there's a lot of emotion in it for
me." she said. "She lives in Canada,
and we don't get to see each other very much.
It seems like every time I take her to the airport
after a visit, I cry.
"One particular time,
I watched her plane take off and I just started
to write...The main phrase in the song is, "We'll
be forever friends under the big blue sky.' It's
about finding out we're not alone.'
"I write whenever
something really moves me. I never decide
to sit down and write a song.:" Drost. said.
"If I have the inspiration, I can write a
song in 10 minutes."
"One of the songs
on my CD, 'Master Gardener,' started with this
phrase that stuck in my mind," she said.
"Eventually, I wrote a whole song about how
we are like gardens and how, hopefully, we are
planting things that grow well inside us."
"The Memory of You"
has a tragic inspiration.
"I lost two brothers.
One drowned in our farm pond when he was 2.
The other was killed in a farm accident when he
was 26." Drost said. "The song
is about the memory of them and how I wish they
were still here. People who are gone are
still with us, in a sense, in our memories.
Your memory becomes a treasure you have to hold
onto."
"My music is not country.
It's not rock. I don't try to write to a
certain style," she said. "I write
what inspires me. If is comes out to be
rock or country or pop or gospel, that's what
I write."
The first 300 CDS and 300
cassette tapes of "Under the Big Blue Sky"
have just arrived, but Drost already is thinking
about what to do next.
"My next project will
probably feature a lot of piano, an instrumental,
meditative kind of thing. I'd like to do
a Christmas album. I'd like to write music
for movies," she said. "Right
now, I'm regional. I'd like to be national
in 10 years."
Drost, a worship leader
at the Green Spring Brethren in Christ Church
and a staffer at the Christian Retreat Center
in East Waterford, got some international exposure
a few years ago when she performed in churches
throughout the Baltic nations of Latvia and Estonia.
Fame, if it comes, won't
change her aims, she said. "I'll always
stay who I am, authentic and transparent.
That shows in my music." Drost said. "I
always want to be touching people. If they're
feeling down or stressed, I want them to go way
feeling that they can keep going."
Matt
Miller
Carlise-Patriot News
2000 |
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