Tara Slone: I loved classical music when I was a kid. I was just drawn to it and I loved singing in choirs and my voice lent itself to that style very well. I started at a pretty young age taking voice lessons and did that all through high school and that was to be my career or at least I thought. But obviously when I got to Dal - housie it became really apparent to do a discipline like that you have to love some - thing deeply because it requires so much work and it is not an easy field to get into, to excel in and I just simply did not have the discipline at that age. I was 18 years old, and I wanted to be with all my friends doing fun stuff at my first year of university, so I moved my focus to theatre which is what I did at Concordia Univer - sity, but obviously music was in my blood and a rock career came calling fortunate - ly. I will always be grateful for the years of training that I did with classical voice because it taught me the importance, and the knowledge of how to use my voice properly. Learning how to properly warm up and warm down is really what kept me from never losing my voice on the road. I never missed a show or had vocal trouble so I credit it to that. Spotlight: Tell us about what led to you becoming the lead vocalist of the Canadian alternative rock band Joydrop? Tara Slone: Well I moved to Toronto, believe it or not, in search of acting and jobs in theatre and film, but again the itch I needed to scratch was music so I was looking in a weekly magazine, called Now Magazine, at the classifieds in the back of the issue, like they used to have and was hoping to find some people to play music with and there was an ad that said, ‘looking for a rock goddess in an already established band contact, Tony.’ So, I thought I guess I could be a rock goddess, I don’t know, and I called and really it was instant chemistry. I loved the guys, and I loved the music they already created. I knew that their style was some -
Photo Credit - Lisa MacIntosh
thing that I would blend in well with and could add to. Really it all happened incredibly fast and ran until the end of 1996 and in the summer of 1997, we had a record deal in play so we were very lucky. Spotlight: Some say that the breakup of Joydrop led to your appearance on television for the first season of the reality television
show Rock Star competing to become the lead vocalist for the Australian rock band INXS. But our research tells us that you were in front of the camera even before Joydrop formed. Can you tell us how your early experience in front of the camera led to your landing the co-host spot on Breakfast Television Calgary in 2010?
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021
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