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Artist
Erik Penny: A Life-Altering Journey My grandfather gave me his old Harmony electric guitar when I was 10, and, even though I liked the idea of learning to play it, I lacked the discipline to really do anything about it. Plus, it seemed to be chronically out of tune. When I was 16, I formed my first band with some schoolmates, claiming I could play bass and sing. I could do neither, but being in a band seemed a good way to learn. I took the first 3 chords I learned and wrote a song, then another, then dozens more, and eventually wrote a good one. This made me think I should keep at it, and I did: from that high-school band in Texas; through several more bands, first in Texas, then in LA; then finally embarking on a solo career in 2004, I have been going steadily at it ever since. My mom and dad were both the oldest siblings in groups of 5. They met in high school choir and I was born a few years later. Upstate New York was home for 4 years, until a job for my dad in El Paso, Texas moved the family from the Canadian to the Mexican border. Summers on the St. Lawrence River and the rest of the year in Texas steeped me in 2 distinct cultures and kept me from ever having any connection to any particular place. That sense of wanderlust (along with a small record deal that ultimately amounted to nothing much) brought me to LA in 1997, where I began to re-learn a bunch of stuff I thought I already knew about the music business. I played in a variety of band projects, fina