HEY EVERYONE! This past week I had the honor of doing a youtube collaboration with someone I've been a fan of for a long time now! She's an amazing talent, and if you haven't heard of her, then please watch this video below, and as soon as you finish, go look her up on myspace and add her as a friend... She's gonna be a superstar someday... I promise you this... Anyway hope you like our version of this Bangles classic!

Kata

Over the last month I've realized how much my life truly revolves around the internet. I have friends that barely ever log on their myspace, only get online a max of once a week. I'm not even sure, maybe that really is the norm. But I my friends, are a different story all together.

Especially over the last year, the internet has truly changed my life. As a teenager it was my only way of communication at times and helped me get over my "homeschool awkwardness", and as a pre-teen it taught me how to play guitar. I owe a lot to the wonderful world wide web.

To elaborate on what I said above. When I was around 11, I had owned a guitar for nearly half of my life, had even tried to take a few lessons, but with no success. The teachers I had, just had no "heart" for music, and just tried to teach me to read notes, and that's just not what I wanted to do. Being the stubborn, hardheaded, redheaded young girl that I was, this just frustrated me, and I would give up and go back to playing with my hot wheels... When the local "computer wiz" came to my house and set up my brand new Gateway computer in my living room, and hooked it up to this crazy thing called the internet. The sentence "You've got mail!" was added to my vocabulary, and I've never been the same since. It didn't take me long to discover all of the amazing video's of all of my favorite artists on the web, and the countless guitar chord and tab websites. I picked up my guitar again, and learned from watching others in video's, and learned my chord shapes from websites. Before I knew it I was playing nearly every song in my shows on my guitar, and within' months was seriously writing for the first time. If it hadn't been for the internet, I don't know if I ever would have seriously made an attempt at playing the guitar.

As years passed, I made some wonderful friends. Some of the most wonderful, and cherished people in my life were my friends when I was 14. But by the time I was 14, my singing career was really taking off, and I was on the road at least half of the year. Home for a week, gone for a week. In California one day, and in Kansas the next. It was crazy. This obviously didn't leave much time for hanging out with my amazing friends. So when I could, I'd log on the internet, and there they would all be, and would talk to me until 3 o'clock in the morning (Oops, I don't think mom knew that, oh well!) about nothing. But some of those late night "AIM CONVO's" are some of my favorite memories as crazy as that sounds.

About a year ago, I had been trying to spread my bands name through myspace, garageband, cdbaby, and other websites for around 2 years. We had made lots of friends and fans from across the country just by those few websites. People we would have never met, or would have never ever known about our music if it wasn't for the net. One day last July I heard one of my friends talking about people singing on youtube. This was a crazy thought to me, making video's of your self singing and posting them to the net? But I went to check it out. I found my old friend Tiffany Jo had made one of these youtube accounts about a year and a half earlier and had over a hundred thousand "subscribers", and thousands of comments on her video's. I also found artists who were just amazing, that I never heard of such as Lisa Lavie, and Kina Grannis. This all inspired me, so I made a video of me singing one of my new originals (I was SO nervous, talking to a camera, what a strange thing to do) and posted it to youtube. I got a few really positive comments, and a few dozen subscribers, but really didn't give it much thought after that. I waited a few months, and recorded myself singing "I Will Always Love You", and then about a month after that recorded Taylor Swifts brand new song, "Love Story". I got a few more comments, and subscribers, but still didn't make any "waves" so to speak. Suddenly, I heard about Taylor's FEARLESS contest on youtube, all you had to do was post a cover of a song off of her new album to her video on youtube, and Taylor and her team would pick out their top 4 favorite video's from the hundreds, and hundreds of entries, and then the public would vote on a winner, and they would receive a $1000 Sam Ash gift certificate, and backstage passes to one of Taylor's concerts. I entered my version of "Love Story", which was far from stellar (One of my classic 4 o'clock in the morning video's), I also decided to make a video of my favorite song off the FEARLESS album, "Hey Stephen". I hadn't even figured out how to turn the volume down on my new laptop, so it was virtually impossible to sing without distorting, and because of this, had to about 20,000 takes on HEY STEPHEN to get a useable version. When I finally did, I posted it to the contest video on Taylor's youtube, and didn't think anything more about it, until one day I opened my email up and it said "The top 4 video's have been chosen for the TAYLOR SWIFT FEARLESS contest". I opened up thinking, oh well I didn't get picked, but let's see who did! I went to the page and right there on the top was my HEY STEPHEN video. I just sat there and stared at the screen, and turned my head from side to side like a curious puppy. Then all the sudden I screamed at the top of my lungs, ran downstairs where Robbie and our friend Matt Leadbetter were recording a new song, and jumped and screamed until they finally calmed me down enough to tell them what was going on. I did not end up winning the contest, the fans chose Emily (Who was amazing, as were Brittany and Ryan)... It was really just a matter of chance who would win. BUT, even though I didn't win, my video got over 40,000 views during that contest, and I went from 30 subscribers to 300 in days. I was getting around 200 emails a day during that time from people who had just discovered my music. All from that Taylor Swift contest. Which I never would have known about if it wasn't for the internet.

Now I've turned into a regular youtube addict, I have posted over 70 video's in the last year, and have over a half a million views on on my video's. I can't believe it. It's the most amazing thing in the world to me to post a video, and by the next morning when I wake up I have hundreds of views on it, and dozen's of comments. I have been SO blessed. So much of the joy in my life comes from reading the beautiful comments from my friends and fans I've met through youtube, myspace, facebook, and twitter. I didn't even realize how much I feed off of those messages and comments until being without the internet for the last month or so.

So I guess the summation of this long blog is, that I wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you who sign in to watch my video's, and hear my new songs. All of you who take the time to send me a comment telling me how my music has touched you, or how I've inspired you to play the guitar. And most of all thank you for believing in me, because it means the world to me. You all will never know how much you've touched my life, and how much I love you!

Luckily I will be getting the internet back into my life, and installed at my new house on Wednesday, and I feel like a little kid at Christmas. So expect a LOT of new video's, and a LOT of new music in the next few weeks.... And I look forward to hearing from you, and actually having the time to write back now! Again. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, I love you!!!

Kata

Jessica and Maddie are the presidents of the new HAY FEVER FAN CLUB, they are just getting started, so please show your support by joining at http://hayfever.ning.com/

THANK YOU!
Kata

FIRST OFF, I am going to be in Nashville this next weekend and will be performing at the open mic at The Bluebird Cafe, it starts at 6. I really hope to see some of you out there! I know I don't get to Nashville often enough, but that's about to change. Secondly, this week I will be having my regular Thursday chat at 8 p.m. EST at http://www.justin.tv/katahay, but I'm changing things up this week. I'm going to take calls LIVE via my say now number on speakerphone, so you could really talk to me, I think its going to be awesome. Like calling into a talk show or something, I'm pretty excited! Here's the number if you don't have it already (918-289-238). So I really look forward to talking to you all on Thursday! Thirdly, I have a BRAND NEW song available for download on our snocap store on the myspace page, only $.79, it's called Far From A Memory. Haven't heard it? Then check out the video on my youtube page (http://www.youtube.com/kataandtheblaze). If you like it, please help show your support and download it! I love you guys so much, I really do... Lots of exciting things this week, looking foward to sharing it all with you!

Much Love!
Kata