Interview with Lauren Mckee

Today I got to the opportunity to interview another Local Vocalist; Lauren Mckee;

Lauren is 18 years old and a Singer/Songwriter and Guitarist from Hull living in London. Lauren started her music career at 13 on YouTube.

Lauren has performed at 350 gigs and written 150 songs.

She has performed at numerous gigs, events and attended open mic nights.

My first question to Lauren was asking, when was it that she first started to sing:

Lauren explained " My family is full of musicians so I've always been around music. I first began taking an interested after watching my Grandad play Starry Starry Night by Don McLean. I was mesmerized by the sound and he then bought me a guitar for Christmas when I was about 9. The first album I ever bought was Jordan Pruitt - No Ordinary Girl and after listening to it I began writing my own music and singing."

So how would you say you got started? Well I started posting videos on YouTube at 13 and was so amazed how you could share my music with the rest of the world and build a fanbase from it. As I got older I then started gigging locally to build up a local following.

I'm aware you perform in public, is this something you enjoy?Yeah I love performing live. I play my own gigs, open mic nights, festivals and events such as wedding. I absolutely love it.

So when you started perfoming, did you start to aspire to perform somewhere?

If I'm honest I would really love to play Shepherds Bush Empire in London. It's such a great place and also the first gig I ever went to was there. I saw Taylor Swift there in 2009.

It obviously hard to get everything spot on in a performance, how do you handle mistakes during a performance?

I try my hardest not to make a mistake but sometimes it just happens. I try to engage with my audience so I'll make jokes, involve them in the performance and tell them what my songs about so if I do make a mistake it usually isn't that embarrassing because I feel really comfortable with the audience. Mistakes happen and you just have to move on, keep going and be as professional as possible.

So would you say you get nervous before a performance? Sometimes but usually I'm really relaxed. I feel more comfortable on stage then I do in everyday life.

Who would you say your musical inspirations are?

Personally I would say this is probably the most difficult question because I have SO many. As a young singer/songwriter I'm into many artists. I'm a huge fan of Ed Sheeran but I wouldn't say he is my musician inspiration however his story inspires me to work hard with my music. My musical inspiration at the moment would be Gabrielle Aplin or James Bay.

I remember seeing one of you youtube videos 3 years ago; Make you feel my love; Adele what would you say has changed since then and is for better or worse? I can definitely say my guitaring and my songwriting has improved massively. Also, since that video I've played over 350 gigs so I have a lot of live experience now.

Aside from music would you say you have any other hidden talents? Erm.. No haha! I'm pretty good with dogs and training them but not sure if that's a talent?

Haha I suppose that counts. When looking at your music, if you had the opportunity to dabble in another genre of music, what would it be?

I think it would probably RnB or Alternative Rock as they're the two other genres I'm huge fans of.

Obviously most artists have hopes, so for you where would you hope to be in 5 years time?

In 5 years time I hope to be still making music and to have built a larger following. My main goal would to possible me touring!! 

That's I'm amazing! so is there any major steps coming up in your music career?

Yes. Next week I move to London to peruse my music career whilst also studying Music Industry Management at BIMM London.

Well Lauren its been a pleasure speaking to you today; Is there any last words you'd like to say? and are we expecting any upcoming gigs or songs?

Thank you for the chat! Yeah, keep checking back on my Facebook and Twitter for new songs very very soon. I'm so excited to finally release these.

Goodluck in everything ;Lauren, and speak to you soon.

Check Lauren out on all her social media accounts;

FACEBOOK www.facebook.com/laurenmckeemusic TWITTER www.twitter.com/laurenmckee_ YOUTUBE www.youtube.com/laurenmckeemusic SOUNDCLOUD www.soundcloud.com/laurenmckeemusic