by Kevin Foster Langston of Tight Gloves PR

For as long as she can remember, Erin Kelly Armstrong has been paralyzed by the emotional potency of a good song.

"When I was young there were songs I'd hear that would make me cry, even if I was too young to understand why," Armstrong says. "The first I can remember was 'True Colors' by Cyndi Lauper. I couldn't have been older than four, but she sounded like she meant it. And that's always been what does it for me. You have to mean it."

Years later, it would be another song that helped Armstrong reach a deeper emotional awareness. Vividly, Armstrong recalls lying on her living room's hardwood floor and letting Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me" steal her breath and, to a lesser extent, her innocence.

"Jesus Christ," Armstrong starts. "Raitt sounded like she'd given up, that she'd lost all hope. She made me feel that. And I started to wonder about loving someone, about losing someone. I was, like, nine or something, but somehow I knew what she was feeling, and it was great. That song helped me not fear heartbreak, but sort of wonder about it. It was so inspiring to me. Fuck ... sadness inspired me? I am Irish, after all."

It's this deep, passionate connection Armstrong has with music that informs the songwriting of her band, My Imaginary Friends, and their latest longplayer, "this is my knife ." Written and recorded over the course of 2 years, the songs on "this is my knife" chronicle Armstrong's move from historical Charleston, S.C., to Los Angeles.

And before you make any assumptions about any supposed champagne wishes and caviar dreams, Armstrong insists, "I'm not in this for a signed contract. I'm sure there are a lot of starving musicians who hope to one day tell their bosses to piss off, but that's not what drives me. For the first My Imaginary Friends show, I had to face the guitar player and randomly turn my face to the back of the stage like I was Syd Barrett or something. I'd performed in public before, but this was different. This was my music and my soul that was being judged. I kept going, because it was all I could do. I had to do it. I felt like it was where I needed to be."

"I really love playing," Armstrong continues, "to the point where I have to coach myself about all the other crap." The thought of selling my 'look' makes my ass twitch." Fortunately, she is easy on the eyes and was almost cast to play Lindsay Lohan's piano-playing body double for a motion picture. But Armstrong is more than a pretty face: Her voice has been used in a song featured on "Entourage," and she has a songwriting contract with Malcolm Welsford Publishing.

It was actually a competitive streak in a young Armstrong that delivered her to the too-high piano bench in her living room and her earliest forays into music. "I wanted to copy Cary and Beth," she says, speaking of her older sisters. "I especially would compete with Cary. She'd work hard on classical pieces — reading and memorizing — and I would watch her and listen and then play it without the music. I loved getting the praise, and I loved the look on Cary's face."

But what Armstrong found in the piano when she wasn't competing with her sisters was a certain, inexplicable comfort. "I wasn't sad or lonely when I sang and played piano. It was home."

Much like heroes Ryan Adams and Paul Westerberg, Armstrong's earliest songs were an outlet for misunderstood and misdirected teenage angst that was channeled in the short-lived, all-female punk band, Leave It To Beaver. And while you won't find even the faintest trace of those punk roots in My Imaginary Friend's sublime piano-based musings, Armstrong has never relinquished her vigor and venom. She just betrays it sometimes with her delicate, indelible voice.

It was that voice that made her the centerpiece of a successful jazz group in Charleston and landed her a gig opening for Ray Charles at the North Charleston Coliseum in 2002. And as lucrative and easy it was for her to sing those standards or whatever Norah Jones song was charting that week, Armstrong wanted to do more with the songs living inside of her.

She says some of her favorite songs have escaped like a breath or involuntary reflex. "But that's usually how I write. They just burst out all at once. Like I had to sing it to finally make sense of it."

Of course, this purging style of songwriting is not without its risks.

"There are some songs I wish I hadn't written, because playing them again, releasing them again, can really suck." But Armstrong understands that you sometimes must mine the darkest corners of your emotions to retrieve that magic that she found in songs like "I Can't Make You Love Me."

It would take another surrender of sorts for Armstrong to come to terms with a musical influence she'd long pacified but now embraces: country music.
"Country music was always an embarrassing thing to be a part of in our town," Armstrong says. "Our family was poor, so I guess our music was the one way we could feel rich; dad's music collection was like his wine cellar."

Armstrong's earliest country influence was actually her maternal grandfather, who was a banjo picker. "Over time it made me feel rebellious," she laughs. "Reverse rebellion, against the cool kids listening to Sebadoh and Fugazi."

They have recently released their 2nd album, "this is my knife," and have just returned from their West Coast Tour with friends, Olin and the Moon.