Photographic Artist: Kat Petersen

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 If you love music and spoken word, especially live performance, you already know that some of the most amazing, most moving, most impressive and most real songs and stories come from the independent artist. 

Oftentimes, these are the people who are writing their hearts out, not to try to make a buck, but because they just have to.  They are truly artists, perfecting their craft because they love it, and because they are driven to express themselves and their talents in ways that speak to the rest of us on a very basic level.  They play in small clubs, gathering a loyal base of "local" fans, maybe even self-produce a CD or two.

For 19 years, the Women In The Arts Festival in East Lansing, Michigan has helped to showcase exactly this type of performer on its annual Day Stage.  

As many as nine artists perform in an afternoon, filling back-to-back half-hour sets with fresh perspectives and well-honed talents.  Appreciative audiences file in throughout the day, often realizing they've been sitting in the same spot for hours transfixed by one performer after another. 

The Women In The Arts Festival only runs once a year for one-and-a-half days -- a Friday night plus all day and evening on a Saturday.  Since there are workshops, homemade food and a crafts area all occurring simultaneously to the Day Stage, a lot of people complained they were not able to enjoy as many of the performances as they'd have liked.  

The Festival producers and attendees, knowing how much others could appreciate the experience, wished they could share the amazing songs, stories, poems and art of the Day Stage performers with an even wider audience.

From this, the concept of a creating a compilation CD of the live performances was born.  Once the idea was hatched, it became clear that it could be a real win-win-win-win kind of thing...  

A reasonably priced CD would allow MANY more people to hear samples of the magic of the Day Stage.  A graphic artist could also be showcased on the cover and the CD itself.  The producers could offer copies at cost to all of the artists so that they could potentially make a little money to help support their art.  Some of these performers could be recorded for the first time ever...  and a historic record of the talent passing through this annual Festival would be created, available for all time to anyone who loves independent women's art (the copyright will make this CD available through the Library of Congress).

Only the best quality would do for this CD.

So that's how it came to be that one of the top sound recording specialists in the state captured the best of nine women performers on November 13th, 2004, and the premier edition of "Sample-her" was launched.  Everyone has at least one "put it on repeat" favorite out of the 20 tracks on this top quality CD, and it is already a run-away hit even before any major promotional efforts have begun.  Word of mouth is accounting for most of the sales to date, and producers expect the upcoming Release Party to be a huge success.