Sangster

Afton Hefley is Sangster, a pseudonym chosen to honor her maternal grandmother, a musician, like herself. ”It’s a play on words as well…”, she says. “It comes from “songster” and is “gangster” with an “s”. I thought that was pretty funny and memorable. Plus, I prefer the idea of having a name for the creative outlet….a name that’s separate. A superhero name, if you will.” Afton was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 22, 1985 and named after her paternal grandfather, who had passed away years before. She was raised with music in the home, at her public school and mostly at her home church in Tulsa, becoming classically trained in piano, voice, & flute. “It was all from my own desire. My parents never pushed me to do anything other than to be a polite and mindful child. I was pretty nutty about music. It moved me and I wanted to know why and I wanted to harness it. I wanted to use it and share it. I wanted to pick up a piece of music and read it just like I would a book. I wanted to interpret it like a narrator. My parents were supportive of anything that kept me out of their hair and kept me happy.” In 2004, she briefly attended Oklahoma City University majoring in Vocal Music Education with Piano Emphasis but, consequently left in search of more satisfying opportunities, a looser approach to making music, and partly due to an “overwhelming self-expectancy to excel”, she says. Nowhere else to turn, she moved back in to her parents house in Tulsa. During this time she taught herself the guitar using her previous music theory knowledge and collecting tips from fellow players. Because of being self taught on the instrument she developed a unique technique. It was also during this time when a new-found interest in songwriting emerged for Afton. “I knew that the music industry was changing. At the time, I knew that the need for full-blown studios with analog tape machines were becoming a thing of the past and people were recording amazing records from the comfort of their own bedrooms….I wanted to do that. I was recording song ideas on a tape recorder that was older than myself. Those tapes are all kinds of jury-rigged. Starts and stops….poor attempts at edits” [ she laughs ]. “I was never exposed to DAWs such as ProTools or Logic and was compelled to learn all I could.” In January 2006, she packed up her life and moved to Phoenix, AZ to attend The Conservatory Of Recording Arts and Sciences. “Somewhere during the whole process of the schooling, I really believed I just wanted to engineer and essentially produce. I hadn’t really found myself as an artist, let alone an adult human being…I had a lot of emotional growing to do, still.” After the 8 month program at CRAS, Afton moved to Southern California to intern at The Compound Studio in Long Beach. Shortly thereafter, she landed a job selling merchandise for Tears For Fears for a 4 date tour along the west coast in 2007. With the band, she toured as a merchandise representative, production manager, and assistant tour manager all over the US, Canada, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Central & South America. The touring with the band was sporadic which left her jobless until a tour would come along. In 2008, Afton began teaching private music lessons to support the off-times from touring. She continued to pursue songwriting and educating herself in music from the comforts and privacy of her home, taking online courses including jazz guitar from Berklee’s (Boston) online courses, through community choirs, and Orff-Schulwerk training at Chapman University. “I just couldn’t get enough. I felt I needed to be incredibly well-rounded and jazz seemed like the most challenging to me. And it was.” While touring with a big band like Tears For Fears, Afton collected a wealth of first-hand experience and knowledge about the music industry. Working behind the scenes and being apart of the process helped to shape what she didn’t know at the time would become her very own career as a musician. “I was feeling pretty inadequate and low. I had forgotten why I loved music so much as a child. At that point, I was terribly worried that I was not “cut out” to be a musician. That I would never be able to see the big picture. I was absolutely riddled with depression and anxiety. I was painting myself into a corner that I could see no way out of. I kept all of that pretty quiet only every so often posting a video on youtube for constructive criticism or humming along to songs during rehearsals.” Hefley didn’t think anyone was paying attention but they were. “I got an e-mail one day from Curt Smith (one half of TFF) asking me if I taught kids piano. He had seen a post on my facebook about teaching or something and was interested in lessons for his two young daughters. Long story short, I started teaching the girls and it became quickly clear that I had been hiding something.” On a tour of the West Coast in 2009, opener, Michael Wainwright, asked Hefley to join him on stage in Portland, OR to sing a duet with him. “That was pretty nerve-racking. I mean, I had been performing in small settings for years but, never with members of a world-renowned band watching from the wings, cheering me on. I was more nervous about that than the thousand-plus people in the audience.” After that, Hefley was asked on stage numerous times with Wainwright and as a backing vocalist for one of Curt Smith’s solo shows at Pershing Square in downtown LA. It was on a tour of the East Coast of the US in 2010, where she sang every night with both Wainwright and Roland Orzabal (the other half of TFF) on stage, when she decided she was going to take a big leap. “I got home and started writing immediately. I needed advice and outside ears, so I contacted Doug Petty, my friend and the keyboardist from TFF. He seemed pretty surprised by what I had so far and offered to help.” Petty and Hefley would meet weekly and iron out her compositions and compile loose tracks to package as a demo. “It was such a revealing and interesting time. I was finally doing what I had wanted to do and quite quickly! I had the support of everyone around me and I was becoming incredibly overwhelmed. I had to keep pushing myself. I pushed myself so hard that it forced me to see the big picture and evaluate myself. There were things that needed to be dealt with. Things needed to change if I were to really start taking care of myself and nurturing this creativity I had so longed for.” Halfway through 2011, Hefley yet again, packed up her life, leaving a relationship of 4 years, and moved closer to the heart of Los Angeles. “I needed to learn to be alone. Nothing felt right. Without divulging too much, I finally allowed myself to see that I was not in a healthy situation.” Hefley began to play her songs at open mics and building a name for herself in the music community which led to more and more playing opportunities. In late 2011, she released 4 acoustic, one-shot live videos of her songs online. “It was a super laid-back project. We shot them all in one day.” She went on one last tour with Tears For Fears in 2011 to tour the US West Coast, Mexico and South America for two months. She was asked by the band to sing backing vocals on a song, “Badman’s Song” along side Michael Wainwright, nightly. “It was such a huge honor and I’m forever grateful to them for giving me such a wonderful opportunity and experience.” Writing for Hefley came to a halt for a while. The focus shifted to playing out live more and healing herself. She decided that tour would be her last, gracefully bowing out and deciding to focus solely on cultivating her career as a musician and educator in Los Angeles. “I’m now at a point where things feel like they’ve settled down and I can come back to these songs and give them the attention that they deserve. It took a long time to really understand them (the songs) and now I do. I’ve learned to create boundaries for myself and allow myself to love. I’ve learned to vibrate in a place of authenticity. A place that I’ve found is so easy to be in once you let go and allow yourself to love and become. I see the big picture now. Her debut release, "Human Becoming" was released on October 8th, 2013 and is available in stores online. Synesthetic Singer-Songwriter Musician in LA with a penchant for classical, jazz, americana, and classic pop.