Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Annie Davis. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Annie , thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.
This is such a great topic! I think most of us who strive to truly make an impact in the world struggle with this issue in some form. My own personal journey has been fraught with battling negative self taught and head trash. It’s a daily war with the demons in our own heads that tell us we are hacks, not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough, not funny enough, not talented enough, etc. I started writing music for the first time in my mid 40s, and started my first rock band in the height of a worldwide pandemic. The challenges that came along with that were nothing like the challenges of dealing with a world I was entirely unfamiliar with and ill equipped for…social media. My very first experience with putting my music on social media landed me a catty comment, not about my music or my lyrics or my voice or the hard work I had put into showing my most vulnerable self to the world…but about my clothes being “too young” for me. I named my band Trashy Annie as a result and decided then and there to lean into being who I am no matter my age, and being fearless in pursuit of the thing I love, no matter what anybody else has to say about it. My hope is to inspire others to do the same. Social media can be a great tool, but it can also be a horrible, negative place full of trolls and naysayers looking to throw you off course at every intersection. One of the keys to feeling good about yourself is to stay your course and remind yourself every day that you can never please all of the people all of the time, and what a boring world it would be if you did! Imposter syndrome doesn’t have to be a negative thing, it can be embraced as a way to drive yourself harder toward success if you teach your brain to find the positivity in being scared of failure.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I grew up in a single parent household with a lot of love but not a lot of money. We were on welfare and food stamps and even at an early age I knew there would be no money for college. In fifth grade I borrowed a trumpet from my elementary school and start teaching myself to play. It was an old dented horn with broken keys and a tuning slide that was frozen closed, but I loved it. I got hooked on music, and trumpet eventually became my path to college just as I had hoped. I was an introverted, nerdy kid with bad skin and frizzy hair and music became my connector to the world in a way I didn’t expect, but I was young and naive and inexperienced in relationships, and when I was in college I fell into an abusive relationship with a guy who was insanely jealous and didn’t like me being out at clubs playing music. Combined with the fact that I was nervous about falling into the financially stressful life of a musician, I got out of music altogether for nearly two decades, went off into the world and started a company called RunLab, which focuses on biomechanical analysis and the treatment of runners and athletes and has achieved a lot of success around the country.
But I missed music like a missing limb, and in 2019 I bought my first drum kit as a Christmas gift to myself because I had always wanted to learn the drums. In Spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world and I had nobody to play music with, so I picked up a guitar. I had always been terrified of the idea of singing in front of people, I had never even done karaoke, so I decided I wanted to write a song and perform it at an open mic just one time to prove to myself I wouldn’t die of fear up there on a stage. I found one of the few open mics still operating during the pandemic and, four shots of whiskey later, nervously performed my first tune called Runnin’, a song that I wrote all with one chord because that’s all I could play at the time. I was immediately hooked and dove into writing. Three years later, at 46 years old I found myself standing on a stage in Lubbock Texas receiving the 2023 CMA of Texas Americana Artist of the Year award, signed to a major indie label out of LA called Cleopatra Records, and touring the country with my ever evolving band that was sliding from its country roots further and further into Rock and Roll.
I released my first album in May 2023, called Sticks and Stones, in which the back album art is made up of nasty comments people have said to me on social media. The album was submitted for Grammy consideration and I am really proud of it. I have a new album in the studio this year, and am co-writing an album with Thommy Price, Joan Jett’s drummer of 40 years and one of the absolute legends of rock and roll. I am touring the country with an awesome group of incredibly talented and a fun bandmates and we are having the time of our lives. It’s a lot of work but I couldn’t be more thrilled with where we are going.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I have never been the most talented person at anything I do, but I am relentless in my pursuit of the things I love. I am up every morning at 6am working on my businesses, whether that is RunLab or Trashy Annie. I think the best three skill sets you can develop in any industry are a willingness to embrace hard work, fearlessness in taking risks, and open mindedness on the need to pivot when something isn’t working. I tell my employees and my bandmates all the time that failure is ok, but let’s fail forward. We learn far more from failure than we do from success. Those that are able to get back on the horse day after day and keep storming castles until they succeed are the ones who make it. Never stop developing yourself, and realize that no matter what success you achieve, the horizon always moves and there is more to learn.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
The number one challenge I am currently facing when it comes to music is learning how to best market our brand in the changing landscape of art. AI is going to have an impact on artists in every form of art, and we need to understand how to embrace and work in harmony with AI without letting it overshadow the human element vital to artistic expression, but it’s scary because it is all so new and leaves a lot to the unknown. In addition, the pandemic changed people’s behaviors and many venues closed down as a result. Encouraging people to get out to a live show for a band they’ve never heard of is a tough thing to solve in a post pandemic world.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.trashyannie.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/trashyanniemusic
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/trashyannie
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/trashyannie
- Other: Music can be found on Spotify and other streaming services under Trashy Annie.
Image Credits
Eric A Booth
