With the final day for submitting music via Sonicbids to Orient Lodge Music Review for this quarter passing last week, I saw a flurry of new submissions. Sixty-seven have been submitted. I’ve written eight reviews already, so I’ve met my minimum goal. Over the next few weeks, I’ll try to get through all the new submissions in hopes of not missing something special that came in at the last minute.

This week, I’m going to lump five different performers together. My preference is towards singer/songwriters, Americana and eclectic music. Several submissions have more of a pop and/or rock feel to them, and while they are pretty good, are not the sort of things that I would normally review.

Sunday, my nine year old daughter Fiona had a friend over and I had them listen to several of these musicians, and here are a few top picks from them.

Starting off at the top of the list is Myla Smith. Myla has a great voice and a lot of studio experience. She began singing in church choirs when she was young and then was part of a group of singers for the PBS show “Barney and Friends”. All of this comes through in her music. Myla is the sort of singer that I wish more nine year olds were inspired by.

Coming in second for Fiona was Tori Allen. Like Myla, Tori has some Texas roots. In Tori’s case it comes through with some hard driving country music. Fiona likes country and her interview with a young local country singer helped get me going with my music reviews and inviting musicians to appear on Fiona’s Radio Show.

Third on the list was the only male performer, Jacob Vanags. Fiona’s friend Jamie really liked Jacob’s music and commented about who well he used some really large words. I think she was struck by his use of circumnavigate in the song “Public Transit”.

In fourth place was Briana Lynn. It is hard to find much of anything about Briana online. She has her MySpace page with eight friends, and that is about it. In her submission she writes,

I have been writing music since I was young and I am now trying to slowly take the steps to let others hear my music. I believe I have the potential to be a more than successful singer songwriter. I haven't got a huge following because I feel awkward doing self promotion, but I can't stop writing.

Well, she really should work on her self promotion because we all liked her music. Perhaps a little bit of it is like writing a blog post. Blog posts, tweets, songs, short stories, novels; they all have lives of their own. We write and then we set our writing free. Some people like some of the stuff we write, other stuff falls flat, but our writings have lives of their own, and the success or failure of one piece or another is just one more step in building up our library of works.

Rounding out the list was Amy Petty. By the time we got to her, Fiona and Jamie were losing interest in the whole process and wanted to go play cards, so probably Amy didn’t get as much attention as she deserved. Also, Amy is a little more edgy, more towards the sort of music that I like. I really like Amy Petty’s music and note that she played at the Berkshire Women's Muse Fest in 2009.

With that, as I like to do for my Music Monday posts, let me end with a video. This one is of Amy singing at A Celebration of the Song at The Sheldon in St. Louis, MO, also in 2009.