By DANIEL PERSON Chronicle Staff Writer
First, a quick timeline:
Stephanie Quayle
Age 15: Stephanie Quayle buys her first guitar, a black cutaway, in a pawn shop on Main Street in Bozeman.
Age 17: Quayle, while studying in Switzerland, tells a band in broken French that she can sing. She’s told in broken English she should try out for an open spot in the group, and goes on to sing with Scotch and Soda for the rest of her stay on the continent.
Age 19: Quayle leaves her family farm north of Bozeman for Los Angeles in hopes of spurring a music career.
Age 29: Quayle returns to Bozeman with a band, an album and a new guitar.
“I haven’t played here in 10 years,” Quayle said Wednesday sitting in the Emerson Cultural Center. “To be able to come back and share this journey has been awesome.”
Quayle is this year’s groundbreaker musician for HATCHfest, the annual festival aimed at inspiring young artists that got underway this week in Bozeman.
Along with several performances, Quayle will be working with young artists to mentor them on how to break through the challenges that come with an artist’s territory. That includes people who will doubt artistic aspirations, she said.
“I had so many doubters,” she said. “The thing about the doubters is you need them. If you have everyone saying, ‘yeah, yeah, great,’ it’s not reality.
“I’m grateful for everyone who told me no…. It’s more fire in the belly.”
Quayle had been working one or two jobs while keeping her music career afloat in Los Angeles when things began coming together. She befriended Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daughter, who introduced the singer to her parents. Shriver then invited Quayle to perform at her Women’s Conference, “the largest meeting of women in the country,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Quayle’s music falls squarely in the country western genre and her upcoming album, she laughs, “is a little bit women-power-esque.”
Take the album’s single “Ain’t No Housewife.”
“It’s not about not being someone’s wife. It’s about having that eye-to-eye relationship with your partner,” she said.
But she said men have responded to her music, as well. One fan approached her after a show to tell her the tune “Alley of Desires” n a song about everything going wrong in her life that could n helped him through a hard time.
Quayle, who grew up listening to country music in her barn, admits that “doing country music in Los Angeles isn’t typical.” Nor has it been easy.
In January, she lost her boyfriend in an airplane crash, a setback she said made it hard for her to get on stage.
But she said she hopes her story could inspire those with high aspirations.
“It feels incredible. This last year has been the most difficult in my whole life. To see it making the little steps forward, it re-enforces the keep going attitude — the don’t stop attitude.”
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