Tess Henley Quotations

My voice is a combination of how I grew up and what I was listening to growing up. I like a lot of different kinds of music and am always being inspired in different ways by different artists for different reasons.

My mom was in a band for over 30 years, and my brother, sister, and I start taking classical piano lessons when we were three. She's really the reason why I'm still playing piano - she made me practice every day before school and made it a priority even when we didn't necessarily want it to be.

My mom eventually told me if I wanted to be in the music industry, I should start writing my own songs. At that time, I was in junior high and had no idea where to start - I was writing joke rap songs with friends. Eventually ,I wrote my first song in high school, and my mom took me to go record it with one of her band member friends at his house.

I'd say most of my songs I write from personal experience. When I feel like I don't have any inspiration in my personal life, I think about others that are close to me and maybe what they're going through or even just people I've come across, acquaintances.

I think I take little pieces of inspiration, then kind of do what's real to me and what's going on in my life or what I observe from other people's experiences and hope other people connect with it, too.

As an independent artist, you're always figuring out how you're going to fund your next album.