Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Angela Peel. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Angela, so happy to have you with us today. You are such a creative person, but have you ever head any sort of creativity block along the way? If so, can you talk to us about how you overcame or beat it?
So, as a recovering over achiever and frequent visitor of “burn out” city, being a creative gets tough in those moments because those are the very things that can hand deliver you into writers block. The way I’ve learned how to combat lack of inspiration and just hitting a wall on new ideas, is to give myself permission to simply not have a new song to write when I feel I “must” write one. To take the blockage as my signal to step away from it and tend to other projects or step away from all projects and just not be achieving something at that time. I’ve found that it’s like looking for something you lost, as soon as you stop looking you suddenly find it. I’ve learned the value of down time, then the creativity just comes when it’s meant to.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
As a creative artist, I consider myself an actress, producer, songwriter and singer. From my time on Season One of Amercian Idol to touring with The Lion King, I’ve been able to explore and further grow my first true love of singing, but I wasn’t always confident about being in front of people. To this day I’m a bit shy and reserved when I’m not recording or performing, but I get thru it in order to do what I love.
On the acting side of things, I’ve recently appeared in a small role in Tyler Perry’s “Mea Culpa” on netflix and prior to that I’ve made some appearances in the reboot of “4400” and the film “The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain”.
Right now I’m working on a band project, A.P.M.D. with our first single “Fairytale” releasing this year.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I would have to say self discipline, patience and gratitude. I spent plenty of time in voice lessons, masters classes and drawing inspiration and learning lessons from my fellow artists along the way, but without those three tools I may have made more mistakes than I did and those are necessary as well.
Self discipline helped me in sticking to working at my craft, honing it, building the confidence to step onto a stage or into a recording studio over and over until I was a machine at it. Even now, I work to build upon that and never stop learning.
Patience helped me along the journey because there will always be setbacks and road blocks on the way to your goals. Aside from external challenges, patience with self is most important and for me, I can be pretty tough on myself in terms of my career. This virtue helped me become both a “go getter” while also being gentle with myself.
When it comes to gratitude, I work to stay mindful of each accomplishment whether minor or major. Gratitude keeps me in the present moment of the “wins” as well as the lessons.
For anyone at the start of their journey, I would say literally just keep going and lean into the “unknown” because sometimes even WE can’t properly imagine our wildest dreams.
What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
What I find works for me is continuing to put time into my strengths while simultaneously building up “muscles” in other areas. For example, I’ve been studying voice my entire life including classical and I’m a self taught acoustic guitar player and producer with no formal training. So I lean into both, learn from my peers and as I do quite a bit of background vocal work remotely, sometimes further learning is on the job. I’m pretty sure the reason I do this is my ongoing battle with overachivement which can be equal parts strength and weakness, so I can say my approach is my version of well rounded lol.
The other reason is simply because I love it. I love the process of exploring multiple genres in my songwriting and production. Every new thing I learn, sometimes through much trial and error, is still exciting to me on a major level.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angela_the_superstar?igsh=NHBoaWdueTVzNWp5
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Iamangelapeel?mibextid=ZbWKwL
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4MX3RtK12HYQDOdz0u6R0V
