Playlist paused
Coronavirus stalls plans for new releases for a pair of young Berks-area singer-songwriters.
This was shaping up to be a notable post-winter stretch for two twentysomething Berks-area natives, each a burgeoning female singersongwriter with plans to release new music recorded last year in Nashville, Tenn.
But, of course, spring sprung a serious surprise, with the coronavirus pandemic overriding everything.
Pottsgrove High School grad Kendal Conrad and Boyertown High School alum Stephanie Grace are now sitting tight while sitting on new songs.
“This virus really derailed my timeline,” Conrad said. “I think the best plan of action for me right now is just to wait and see what happens.”
Coming to her senses
Conrad, who splits her time between Upper Pottsgrove Township and Music City, was in the middle of parceling out the contents of a five-song EP she recorded last year in her second home. Rather than releasing all the songs at once, she decided to give each one its moment.
“‘Come to Your Senses’ I put out first at the end of June,” said Conrad, who has opened for Blake Shelton, kicked off two of Reading’s Downtown Alive’s free concerts, and opened for Alabama at Santander Arena.
“I wanted to put that one out first because it was the safest commercial pop/country song that I had.”
That was followed by the skittering, supremely confident “Leader of the Pack” — “If you throw me to the wolves, I’ll come back the leader of the pack” — later in the year.
“Each one I wanted to be a different emotion,” Conrad said about her song collection. “So ‘Come to Your Senses’ was a fun, flirty one. ‘Leader’ is like a badass, balls-to-the-wall song. And then I have a heartbreak ballad, which sounds like a Celine/ Mariah/Whitney thing, and it’s real belt-y. And there’s almost like a 2000s R&B slow jam. And the last one is a straight-up dance track.”
That last one was lined up as the next single, to be released at some point in spring. She also was planning to shoot a “Leader of the Pack” video at the Lehigh Valley Zoo, where a pack of wolves live.
And she kept up her eclectic performing schedule: playing the Reading Royals’ Country Night at Santander Arena, singing the national anthem during a Philadelphia Phillies spring training game in Florida, even performing in the terminals at Lehigh Valley Airport as part of its new concert series.
But soon after she played a pregame show for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms at the PPL Center in Allentown, the new reality hit home.
“When Gov. Wolf put Montgomery County on lockdown,” she said, “I realized life was going to be turned upside-down for a lot of people.”
Conrad said that because this is different from typical time off, it’s hard for her to focus on things. So she’s been doing a lot of mindless work, like organizing and cleaning.
When the pandemic finally passes and she can return to her craft, she’ll continue to try to find ways to hang pop sensibilities and production on country frameworks.
“I feel like what I’m doing is unique to me, so I want to keep pushing that,” she said. “It’s merging pop and country, and maybe it means a little more pop than the other ones. When I pitch it to country labels, they say, ‘Oh, this is pop.’ And when I send it to pop publishers, they say, ‘This is country.’ So I just don’t fit in anywhere. I should probably pick, but I don’t want to.
“I want really heavy bass. And country doesn’t do that. If you listen to the radio and you hit a country station, the bass disappears, and then you go back to a pop station and it’s back. And I wanted that bass in my country songs. Why is that a pop thing? And at some point I decided that’s what I want to do. I want bass.”
Live performances used to be a great way for most artists to make money; now it’s the only way. Streaming platforms, which offer artists very little in the way of royalties, have taken over the industry.
But in a Catch-22, up-andcoming artists can only get the attention of labels if they focus on racking up streams rather than pushing exponentially more-profitable downloads or CD sales. Conrad said she’s accepted not making money now by focusing on boosting her streaming numbers in the hopes that they lead to productive meetings with record labels.
But there’s no substitute for live performances, though she’s doing all she can to get herself out there virtually.
“I have been having a ton of fun playing Facebook Live and Instagram Live shows,” she said. “Everyone watching can comment in real time, and it feels like we are all in the same room together. It isn’t the same as performing live and feeding off of everyone’s energy, but it is definitely a wonderful alternative to stay connected.
“My heart hurts for the community during this crisis, so if I can continue to entertain while in quarantine, that’s the best way for me to do my part and help.”
Grace under pressure
Two years ago, Stephanie Grace released “Nobody,” a catchy, cleverly crafted ode to the joys of being single. Little did she know her life was about to undergo a series of changes, kicking off with one development that turned “Nobody” on its head.
“‘Nobody’ was about being excited about nobody and just embracing it,” Grace said. “Three months after I put that single out I met my boyfriend. And for me it was so exciting and wonderful to meet someone and be so happy. In June it will be two years.”
That development led her to write the mirror image to “Nobody” called “Look What I Got,” a song celebrating falling in love.
Recorded in November in Nashville, the “feel-good but not eye-rolling song” was to be the follow-up to her “Private Pond” EP, which was released in March 2019. First on the to-do list was shearing off 8 to 10 inches of her hair, to be donated to the Michigan-based nonprofit Children With Hair Loss.
The musical cut would introduce a new Grace; the single’s cover art would introduce the singer’s newly cut hair. The photo shoot was to take place in March; the tentative release date for the single was sometime in May.
But before the ball could start rolling, the pandemic started rolling across the country, and the salon where the cutting was to take place was forced to shut down on Wolf’s orders.
“So everything about this single has been put on hold,” Grace said. “I hate to even try to put a release date on it at this point because there’s just so much uncertainty.”
The crisis also affected one of her other recent life changes. To support her singing career, Grace in 2017 began working at Snap Fitness in Douglassville. The rapport she developed with the members, especially women, led the gym’s lead trainer to urge her to consider getting certified as a personal trainer.
“Women have this fear of lifting weights and getting bulky, and I was kind of trying to break down those barriers,” she said. “So in May of last year, I took the certification exam and passed, and ever since then I’ve been training one-on-one clients and small groups, along with classes twice a week.”
That also has been put on hold, though she continues to do virtual workouts on Facebook.
Her third and most recent avenue of employment, co-hosting “Mornings with Mike” on WEEU-AM 830, remains unaffected, at least for now. A frequent guest on the radio station, Grace was approached by longtime host Mike Keller in December about filling his soon-tobe-vacant co-host seat.
“I remember I was like, I have no background in radio; I can barely talk,” she said. “That’s why I sing, because I can’t talk.”
But the station liked what they heard, and she was hired for the five-mornings-a-week position in February.
“So now I get up at 4:30 every morning, which, as a musician, is a little rough,” she admitted.
While her singing career is on hold, Grace says she’s trying to focus on the positives, but the one thing she misses more than anything happens to be the one thing that is absolutely off-limits right now: performing for a live crowd.
“That’s the No. 1 thing that’s been really hard to grasp,” she said. “I’ve done a Facebook livestream, I’ve done an Instagram livestream, and I plan on doing another one soon because I feel that’s the only option I have right now to sing for an audience.
“But performing for an audience and engaging with them in the same room, seeing their faces and feeling that connection — nothing compares to that. So I’m craving that and missing that so much.”