Tonya Kennedy is living proof that one can be a mom and have a career and still strive to achieve one’s artistic dreams.

The Barrie-based singer recently released her first single The Next 30 Years, to country music radio stations across Canada, and it has already been picked up by a number of those stations as part of their regular playlist. A second single, Walk of Shame, will be released later in the spring.

Although she’s been singing all of her life, the mother of three and civilian employee with the Barrie Police Service, only began to get serious about her craft in the past three years.

And it really began when she decided to enter a radio station vocal contest back in 2005.

“You know, it was one of those weird sequences of events. I happened to be listening to Star 107.5 at the time (now Barrie 107.5 Kool FM) and they were doing their Star Search and I thought, ‘oh, that sounds cool.’ I popped onto their website,” she said.

The prize was a chance to have a song recorded at a professional studio. Kennedy checked out the website for the studio and discovered another contest, this time for the Rock 95 Christmas compilation. Kennedy put her name in and all the particulars, and got selected and went to the studio to record.

“And when I was there the guy said, ‘hey, there’s a contest down in Oshawa at (country music station) KX96, and I think you’d do very well, you should go down and try it out. It’s a country station, but you can sing whatever you want,’” Kennedy said.

Kennedy had never sung country music before, but decided that since the contest was for a country music station, and the contest was going to be held in a country music bar, she’d better learn some tunes.

Kennedy started playing in bands in Newmarket in high school, at a time where there wasn’t the greatest repertoire of female rock singers to emulate.

“There was the odd bit of female stuff. I mean, when I was in a band in high school, I was singing Rush and stuff like that. I’ll never forget the stuff they used to make me sing in that band,” she said, adding that dropped out of the music scene to concentrate on being a mom, and only decided to get back on stage in the mid 1990s.

“There was a slew of rock girls then, Alanis (Morissette), Tracy Bonham and No Doubt, and I thought, ‘oh, I’ve got to start singing again, there’s all this stuff to sing now.’ And that’s what kind of brought me back into it. I always joke that Alanis got me singing again."

In the interregnum between the late 1980s and the late 1990s, Kennedy still had a very full life.

“I got married, I had a couple of kids, and I got divorced. I was a single mom for a long time, and then I met my second husband and we had a baby,” she said.

Husband Neil, who is a police officer, is also a musician and songwriter, and understands the artistic drive and impulse that motivates his wife into wanting to make a career as a recording artist, songwriter and performer.

He has helped her balance her musical ambitions and her responsibilities at home, giving her the freedom to pursue her dreams.

“If I wasn’t with him, I probably couldn’t do this. He’s really good at sort of taking over at home if I need anything or want to do anything. He’s incredibly supportive and he knows without me having to say anything how much all of this means to me. So we’ve never had to sit down and have the conversation, ‘I need you to do this for me, because I have to do this music.’ It just has sort of worked out. It all feels pretty natural.”

They have talked about what might happen if Tonya is offered the opportunity to go out on an extended tour as the supporting act for a big-name act.

“If it happens, we’ll deal with it. We had the conversation that if the opportunity arises, I will go. I won’t let it pass me by. But until it is actually standing at my front door, there’s no point worrying and stressing about it. Then I will deal with it, and how it’s actually going to happen,” she said, adding that friends and family would be drafted to help Neil pick up the slack at home.

Being a wife, mom and career woman means there is a lot more involved in trying to get a music career going than if one were a 20 year old with little responsibility. But Kennedy said the extra effort is worth it.

“For me, it will take a lot of planning to make it happen,” she said. “If you don’t have a support system, whether that’s your family, or just your friends or people you’ve hired, you’re going to have a tougher time,” she said.

The Next 30 Years was recorded at Kitchener’s Cedar Tree Recording Studio with producer J. Richard Hutt, a well-respected industry veteran who has worked with the likes of Tom Cochrane, Anne Murray and Canadian country music star Beverly Mahood.

She has hired a radio tracking firm to try and get radio stations to play the song, and track how many times it’s been played. The same will happen for Walk of Shame.

Both songs are part of a bigger project that will see Kennedy keep recording songs until she has enough for a CD. If she is able to obtain funding through the federal government’s FACTOR program, the full CD could be out by the summer. If not, she will keep paying on a song-by-song basis.

She will also be spending a good chunk of the summer on the road, playing festivals. Kennedy will be playing the Barrie Fair in the fall, and hopes to play the Celebrate Barrie festival as she did last year. She also played at Kempenfest.

She is asking her fans to request the song on both KX96, and the new KICX 106.1 FM locally.

If you want to listen to, or download The Next 30 Years, go to her website. It will be available on ITunes soon.

As well, check out other websites, links to which are provided.

-    Jim Barber is the Arts, Sports and Lifestyles Editor for the Barrie Advance. Contact him at jbarber@simcoe.com