Mollie Smith

Nineteen-year-old Mollie Smith’s dream has always been a career in music. At a young age, she begged a performer at a local music festival for a chance to sing on stage. Her “big break” was getting to sing a capella while the dwindling crowds were leaving with their lawn chairs. Amazingly enough, people stopped in their tracks and began to wonder back towards the stage in amazement. In the crowd were two members of a local blues band, The Tremors. They asked Mollie to sing with them in a portion of their next concert. This was the spark that ignited her passion for the stage and performing.

It’s a challenge to pursue a music career in a small town in Wyoming. There’s little or no access to professional recording studios and few venues for performance. Even starting a band is a bigger challenge in a small town because there’s not a ready supply of musicians looking to collaborate.

In spite of the challenges, Mollie has kept her dream alive. She built her skills in school choirs and with voice and piano lessons, competed in multiple talent shows, recorded hooks for other artists around her town, and even competed in the Miss Wyoming Teen pageant on a whim – though she had never tried a beauty pageant before. To her amazement, she won the state pageant and moved on to Miss Teen USA to become one of only three girls from Wyoming to make the Top 15 in the history of the entire Miss Teen USA pageant system.  She reconnected with The Tremors and honed her skills singing the blues with them at local clubs. Mollie blew audiences away each and every performance with a big, bluesy voice belting out of a tiny blonde.

Over the last few years, Mollie has been writing her own songs. “It’s important to me,” she says, “and it’s been surprising how many people have said they can relate to my songs that were about experiences so personal to me. I want to bring people in with me through my music. I want them to live through my experiences as they listen.”

Frustrated that her hometown did not offer any recording opportunities, she decided to record her songs herself.  With only a MacBook, a $40 microphone, and a keyboard, she brought her songs to life. As her music spread throughout her small town, the production quality caught the attention of a few other local artists who asked her to produce some of their own work.

Mollie’s songs are entirely her own- from the keyboard performances to the lead and background vocals. When she entered her music into mixmatters.com’s Next Hot Artist competition, she did so only on a whim. She was even more awestruck to see that she had won, even when going up against 20 other songs, some of which were much more professionally recorded.

With an eclectic musical style that incoorperates elements of Jazz, R&B, Pop, and Blues, Mollie certainly has a sound of her own. She sites Amy Winehouse, John Legend, Eva Cassidy, and Natasha Bedingfield as a few of her biggest influences.

“Being from Wyoming, there are little to no musical opportunities. A few years ago, knowing where I lived made it hard to see a future in music for myself, but now I just use it as a force to push me that much harder. I am as of now 100% independent- no manager, agent, no big producers, and I’m not signed to a record label. I felt so blessed when I realized I had won the Next Hot Artist competition. I’m hoping that by having my feature on this great music site, someone from the industry will take notice of my story and music. Whether that happens or not, though, I have one of the fiercest passions and a drive that can’t be stopped. I will make it in this industry, and I’ll keep working until I do. For now, I’ll continue to make my best effort to write music from the bottom of my heart that I can only hope touches people in theirs’.”

www.myspace.com/missmolliemusic