Today, The Tri-City News returns with its summer series called Bright Young Things that focuses on graduating students who plan to pursue careers in the performing or visual arts.
Bailey Alexis has many "likes" around the world.
The 17-year-old Coquitlam resident, who recently released her debut EP titled Rescue Me, counts fans as far away as Mexico, Pakistan, Italy, the UK, Egypt, India, Chile, Greece and Trinidad and Tobago.
On her Facebook page, Bailey Alexis Music, where the soon-to-be Centennial secondary graduate has posted publicity photos and videos of herself, they offer her words of encouragement and she, in return, thanks them for the support.
So far, she has nearly 4,300 "likes" - not bad for someone who is predominately promoting herself à la Justin Bieber, that is, through social media.
Alexis has hard copies of her EP but it's her downloadable music - via CDbaby, DMDS, iTunes, Amazon MP3 and Zune, to name a few - that makes her songs readily accessible.
Alexis admits to being surprised by the pace of her success through Facebook and the online Jango Radio; in one week, her Facebook fans quadrupled. "It all happened so fast," she said from her home in April. "It kind of took me off guard."
Alexis points to her step-father, Amit Das - her manager and the EP's executive producer - for putting her career on track in the digital world. Das, who has an IT background, said it took a lot of research "and seeing what everybody else was doing to figure it out. We did some Facebook and Google advertising to get the word out, too."
But though it may have been a learning curve - "and a large investment for us," chipped in her mother, Cheryl Das - it's Alexis' natural talent, not only as a singer but also as a songwriter, that made organizing her lifelong ambition easy.
Alexis (her real name is Bailey Rathbone) discovered her passion several years back while singing karaoke at an equestrian ranch in Maple Ridge. "I thought, 'This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,'" she recalls.
She took lessons in singing, piano and guitar as well as Hawaiian dancing. And she honed her performance skills at charity and community events, including at the Terry Fox Run in Coquitlam.
Over the past year or so, she's concentrated her efforts on songwriting for her new EP, which was recorded at The Warehouse Studio in Gastown, at Bully's Studios in New Westminster and at home.
Her EP has five original songs, all of which speak about relationships. For example, the first track, Rescue Me, is about someone going through a difficult time in their life; the EP ends with an acoustic version. Gone is about splitting up with a partner while No One's Watching is a "1980s upbeat song about feeling good with someone," Alexis said, adding Laughs No Lies has a similar theme.
You Lose talks about someone who breaks your trust.
"This music is me and I don't feel that I can't feel like this because because I'm 17," she said. "I feel like my music is intelligent. It's not mainstream. It's my own style, and I'm getting positive feedback."
As for her next steps, Alexis is working on a music video and, in September, she plans to attend the triple threat training course at Blue Egg Studios in Gastown.
You can see Bailey Alexis (www.baileyalexis.com) perform and sign her EPs at Coquitlam's second annual Daisy Day festival at 12:15 p.m., on a stage located in the Safeway parking lot on Austin Avenue. Visit www.austinheights.ca.
