Amanda Halsey's Quest For The Big Time

When Amanda Halsey was 4 years old growing up in Bay Shore, she would tape theme songs of her favorite television shows, such as “What’s Happening!!” onto her Fisher Price tape recorder and sing along to the words. She would do the same when listening to the radio and popular rhythm and blues songs. She would sing and sing and sing until she could bring her own developing voice to the nearest possible copy of what she heard.

Over several years, and after only six voice lessons, Ms. Halsey began to shape and form her own sound. And as she discovered, no matter what other line of work she managed to do for her day jobs, her passion for singing is what really drove her.

“I started taking singing seriously after college. I was a bad waitress, a bad secretary, pretty much bad at all those sorts of things,” she said during a recent interview. “But, I knew music was the path.”

From an early point, Ms. Halsey said she discovered that her natural singing voice had a wide range.

“My voice is versatile. I try to keep it smooth. I can sing country music, R&B or soul music and I have a range of about five octaves,” she said. “I can get up into the whistle register if I have to.”

In 2001, the singer began to record demos of soul songs. She also wrote her own music and began recording at the now-closed Power Play Recording Studio in Westhampton Beach. Not long thereafter, her recording of Etta James’s classic love song “At Last” was played on WLIU 88.3, which is now Peconic Public Broadcasting, WPPB 88.3.

When Power Play Studios closed in 2007, Ms. Halsey started recording at Thunderhoof Productions in Hampton Bays. There, she refined her sound, with the help of studio owner and producer, Joey “Coach” Hanna, who has written, recorded, and/or toured with artists such as Gavin DeGraw, Carrie Underwood and Brandi Carlile.

From there, Ms. Halsey said she began seeking out different avenues of exposure and decided to take on the responsibility of recording her music herself. She bought a professional microphone and found free software that would allow her to record up to 40 vocal tracks with varying harmony possibilities. The years flew by and Ms. Halsey amassed a collection of her own originally written pieces as she continued to hone her voice.

The next step was to find some sort of accompaniment, so she opted to use a social networking site geared toward connecting fellow musicians, indabamusic.com. From there, the door swung wide open, she reported.

Andrea Caraciollo, or Andrea Carax as he said he prefers to be called, a musician and producer who favored Ms. Halsey’s particular style of singing, found her through the site and was immediately intrigued. The two communicated their ideas to one another virtually for a time before they ultimately reached a decision to collaborate. From there, Ms. Halsey’s “New York EP” was born into an all digital format and became available on iTunes and Amazon.com in April 2010.

Much to her surprise (and delight), soon after her songs appeared online, one of the tracks from the “New York EP,” “Dreams Come True,” made its way onto the air in the Netherlands in April 2010. The popular Netherlands Public Broadcasting hip-hop and jazz radio station, Radio 6, picked up the song after a deejay downloaded it and sampled it on air.

“That was a really surreal experience,” Ms. Halsey said. “It’s really easy to have doubt in this industry and a lot of people are quick to say, ‘You’re crazy! What are you doing? Stop doing that and get serious,’ but when I was played on the radio in a different country, well, that was a different feeling altogether!”

Ms. Halsey continued to push forward along her musical path and ended up recording a music video version of “Dreams Come True” in Manhattan’s Central Park. The video, which was aired on YouTube, was the first one she had ever recorded and came to fruition with the help of Saul Barenbaum, a Hofstra University film student.

“It was recorded in basically 15 minutes. It was sort of strange having all of these people looking at me in the park as I’m recording this video, but it was unlike anything I had done until that point,” she said. “It was exciting.”

Since April of last year, Ms. Halsey has focused her energies on putting out two more extended play musical recordings (EPs), one of which, “Panic Marriage,” will debut this month. That EP, she explained, recalls stylings of Mariah Carey but also contains a blend of both soul and contemporary rhythm and blues.

Things have changed dramatically for Ms. Halsey since the days she spent pressing buttons on her brown Fisher Price tape recorder. She now splits her time between Westhampton and New York City, in what she describes as a feverish pursuit to create. She also said that her urge to perform is strong, no matter what, even if her dreams don’t necessarily come true when it comes to becoming a giant star.

“If it comes from the heart and it’s ultimately rejected, sure, it hurts,” she said. “But if I’m being myself when I wrote the songs, I should be proud to get out there and share it with the world, no matter what.”

Ms. Halsey will perform as a part of the “Original Voices at the Vail” series on Thursday, March 24, at Vail-Leavitt Music Hall in Riverhead.