So here I am, 34 and in a band? What am I doing?! That question ran through my head from the time I left work to the end of our SXSW set.

In May of 2004, I decided I needed a new outlet, something exciting and different, as the gym just wasn’t cutting it. I needed something that would make my Mom smile knowing her cash for piano lessons paid off...so I decided to buy a keyboard.

It was then that I started “casually experimenting” with two very good friends. We were telling jokes, drinking wine...you can picture it. It wasn’t long however until those “experiments” developed into songs, and by the fall we had written three. Xcella was born! We discussed playing shows and the idea of making our 3-piece a 5-piece by adding a bassist and drummer. Just the thought of playing in front of an audience made my hands sweat...and they’re sweating now just thinking about it. It was then that we noticed the entry deadline for SXSW was around the corner and thought, “What the heck, let’s enter!” We got our three-song demo together, sent it in, and a few months later, we received the “Congrats, you’ve made it in!” email. We were ecstatic! Once the high fives died down, we asked ourselves, “Who’s our drummer? Who’s our bassist?”

Fortunately, everything worked out perfectly. We found the drummer. We found the bass player. All was good in the world of Xcella.

We thought it might be beneficial to get at least one show under our belts before the big SXSW show, “Uh yeah!” I did not want my first time on stage since high school drill team in ‘86 to be for SXSW. So that’s what we did. Our first show was just one month before SXSW. Although the hands were shakin’ like leaves, we could not have had a better time! The pre-show jitters gave me a post-show high that was indescribable.

A writer for Venus, a magazine that features articles of women in music, art, film and fashion, happened to catch our set. She wrote. “My SXSW experience starts with one of Austin’s best new bands, Xcella, at the Chuggin’ Monkey. They start with a mid-tempo groove and spacey, phaser-style keyboards before quadrupling the volume and bouncing into new-wave rock and roll fury.”

And with that, I’d like to say, “Mom, I take back every complaint I ever made about piano lessons.”