Today we’d like to introduce you to Charlie Kennedy.
Hi Charlie, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started songwriting early on and began guitar lessons at nine when I wanted to play in my school’s talent show and perform “Soak up the Sun” by Sheryl Crow. The record stopped playing right at the beginning so I got everyone clapping to keep the tempo and performed solo with my guitar.
From that moment, I knew that I wanted to become a singer. I loved music growing up from all genres like Pop, Classic Rock, Hip-Hop, Dance and Alt-Rock, which encouraged me to join my first band at 15 called, “The Onset.” After performing locally, I headed to California to pursue film & music when I joined my band, “Forget Your Friends,” as guitarist and singer. We performed at venues like The Whisky-A-Go-Go, The Roxy, The Viper Room and then began touring the West Coast with our Newgaze sound and playing festivals like Bakersfield’s iHeartRadio Free4All concert and even Vans Warped Tour during the summer of 2017. Since I’ve played mostly indie/alt-rock genre’s, I wanted to dive into creating Pop music because I loved listening to it and thought my songwriting would work well for the genre. My mom and I came up with my artist name, “Royalbaby,” and she also invested in me to record “Nu Boiz” as my first Pop single that I worked on with Mia Koo and Directed the music video for during school.
After graduating, I worked at a music house where my boss became my Producer and we wanted to collaborate on a track that we could pour our creativity into. We first worked with the company’s record label on “Swayze” and my friends from college even created a music video for it. “Tapestry” was the first track Jonathan and I worked on together which inspired us to write an album and now we’ve released two single’s with four more songs on our album to drop in the new year, 2021. Our most recent release, “Selfish Ways” became available this year on October 23rd with a music video that I wrote and Jonathan produced, working with an amazing animation team and an extremely talented sound designer. In the process, my band is about to release a new single called “Cherry Valance” and I’m working on additional music that I’ll be releasing under my name later this year. During quarantine, I’ve been writing even more and can’t wait to expand my music collection for new and familiar listeners to enjoy.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I have taken a lot of chances by moving across the country by myself at 18 while attending College in a state where I knew no one and having a dream that I didn’t know how to achieve. I’ve had to put myself out there and push past my fears because I knew my goals were much greater, but also have had to face reality in a lot of ways. For the most part, I have to say luck has been on my side since I found so many friends that I look up to and can creatively work with. My goal was to create music with various producers and develop my own sound as an artist so that I could learn as much as possible and expand my inspiration. I also dreamed of touring with a badass band and that dream came true when Skullcandy brought my band on a custom tour bus for the Summer to perform at Vans Warped Tour where some of my favorite artists had also played. The best part of it all was that we were voted to play by over 40,000 people who tuned in to hear us live and supported us all the way through the tour.
We were not “represented” by any label, so this tour meant a lot to us because we felt honored to have been a part of it. It was also a side dream (definitely an older one that I just wanted to participate in) to audition for American Idol since my family used to watch that show and critique everyone. As karma has it, I auditioned for about 30 seconds until the judges put their hands up to stop me and I didn’t even pass the first round. I also remember getting an offer from an investment team and turning it down because their PowerPoint presentation looked sketchy, but now looking back I think that may have been a sweet deal for a year or so. Everything I can say is totally perspective. I’ve really enjoyed my journey, although I prefer a challenge so the road hasn’t been the smoothest, but that’s not to say it’s been any less enjoyable. I’m excited to continue my journey and am looking forward to making new goals and challenging myself while learning even more along the way.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I worked at a well-known music house in Los Angeles where I learned about the Ad Agency world and also worked at a Global Digital & Design Company to learn about e-commerce. At the music house, I sang on advertisement commercials like Kay Jewelers, Samsung, Pepsi, CA Lottery, etc. and am now a freelance vocal contractor and am hoping to expand my resources for more work in this field. I’ve written a few jingles and mnemonic’s for radio advertisement and local tv campaigns for clients such as Volkswagen and am working on a library for submitting to song licensing. With a Directing degree, I’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating short films and writing scripts as well as music videos for personal projects. My expertise within filmmaking are Directing/Writing and Producing where I’ve Directed/Produced various projects including various shorts and music videos. Now that I have a broad base of contacts from living on both coasts, I can rally a cool team together on a project and believe that coordinating these collaborations will be beneficial to whatever team I’m on.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Teamwork; I have always wanted to feel like I’ve worked towards my successes, if any and wanted to become knowledgeable and experienced in the industry. I originally wanted to go down in Rock and Roll’s Hall of Fame and have multiple music hits instead of a “one hit wonder,” but heck, I’d take even the one-hit right now! It’s extremely difficult these days to get by with a music career professionally. I have always wanted to be a part of a “team” and Directing film projects as well as creating music with Producers and instrumentalists has really fine tuned what success means to me. Success is finding that right team and excelling at each other’s goals using everything you’ve learned, working collectively. That’s when I feel like I’ve accomplished something.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.iamroyalbaby.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iam_royalbaby/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamroyalbaby
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/iam_royalbaby
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgIfe5hEPXg
Image Credits
Chrissy Britt, Ev Alexander & Amber Paredes
