Date Signed: November 2024
Label: Open Your Ears Records
Type of Music: Pop-Rock
Publicity: Becky Kovach - Big Picture Media
A&R: Adam Hickok - Open Your Ears Records
Lest anyone doubt that it pays to have friends in high places, look no further than Faith Alesia’s solo project Penny Bored. And lest anyone doubt that making connections in the music industry can turbocharge a budding artist’s career… well, those people are wrong too.
Alesia, who resides in Dallas, started getting serious about playing music in 2020. Like an untamed wildfire, Alesia’s homemade recordings took on a life of their own, eventually making their way to revered booking agent and independent artist manager Nina Swint from Nashville.
Due to Swint’s unparalleled reputation, veracity and voraciousness—and the fact that Swint saw the potential in Penny Board—Swint swayed the notoriously snobbish and oversaturated Nashville music community to give the up-and-coming artist a good look.
The new friendship couldn’t have come at a more critical time too, according to Alesia. And the greatest gift of all? Swint brokered the record label contract without Alesia having to get involved.
“When I started out (as a musician), I had no idea what I was doing,” the musician admits. “I was just trying to figure it out (on my own).”
Such a mindset is romantic and quaint, but young artists so quickly discover that it’s an effectively fallacious proposition. Once that harsh reality sunk in for Alesia, the artist expanded her team further with a dedicated producer of her music: JoJo Centineo,
“Me and JoJo were like, ‘We've got to keep writing together.’ And (we’ve kept it up) ever since then. He's been a really great mentor through everything."
Alesia clarifies she is still in contact with Centineo but they each had separate artistic aspirations to pursue.
“I kept doing my own thing and working on new music,” Alesia says. And, wouldn’t you know it, the artist got another big break when Open Your Ears expressed interest in the artist’s material.
In sum, Alesia reflects, “I just want to keep writing music that I'm happy with. I keep writing fun pop-rock music … maybe one day, I might want to write heavier music, one day I might want to just dive completely into pop music. I feel like my music taste is always changing, and that definitely reflects on my writing. I just want to be one of those artists that doesn't really stick with one genre, and I just want to be able to do whatever I want creatively.”
