Just singing in my living room to probably my uncles and aunts or something after a family dinner. (Damn, mom….you really loved those ribbons and bows, huh?) Ha! My mom loved picking out my clothes and sticking all kinds of arts and crafts knick knacks she would find at the store on my outfits. Love you Mom!

I grew up with a dream. A silly dream, but a big dream. We didn’t have Youtube when I was a kid. We didn’t have Spotify. If you wanted to perform, you couldn’t just open up your iPhone camera and put a tape up the same day…you actually had to perform.

When I was nine, my dad would take me to a senior citizens’ nursing home in St. George, Utah, and I would sing for a half hour during their lunch break. I remember it well. There was a room that looked like a big cafeteria with long tables, and they would all sit and look at me and clap and smile. That was the first time that I sang out in front of people and felt like I was connecting. I could see them reflecting on memories with each song.

I sang around town a lot…wherever they would have me. At the Utah rodeo, the county fair, the arts festival, the street festival, the Electric Theater.

I was in a band with my older sister, Meg, when I was fourteen. We wrote some songs, although if the truth be told, Meg was the writer first. She was the performer first. She’s the one who inspired me to do it all. And those were the best years of my life, playing on that stage with her and my best friends.

A lovely family owned a venue in St. George called The Electric theater, and they would let my sister and I, and our band, “Jade Harbor” open up for local acts. (I still have my first band t-shirt for my first band ever, and I’ll never sell it. Not for a million dollars). We opened up for so many musicians and that’s where we met our first manager, at a small local show in Utah.

My first band, Jade Harbor, playing a short set to a small crowd at the Washington County Fair. Every year I was excited for August to come around so I could perform. The talented Juddy Anderson is playing guitar behind me. He introduced me to Wilco (still one of my favorite bands). Bucky Flowers is in blue on bass, Meg on guitar and Sunny Beck on drums. They were a wonderful group of musicians, those gentlemen and Meg.

Our band performing in a tiny Mexican restaurant. I can’t remember where this is, but I think I was 17 or 18 at this time. We honestly would perform wherever they would have us.

I guess you can say the rest is history, right? We signed to an indie label, Doghouse Records, then went to Warner Bros. Records. Then got dropped, then I signed to Universal Records, then got dropped, and now I’m with Nettwerk. Four record labels before I’m thirty years old. I guess you can say I get around.

I was in a band for a long time called “Meg and Dia.” We put out 4 albums and 5 EP’s and toured for years and years. Some years I was on the road for 8 to 9 months, playing well over 200 shows a year. For the longest time, we didn’t have a bus. We slept in our van, in parks, in Walmart parking lots, and at strangers’ houses if they were kind enough to offer up their floor after a small show. We washed our hair in Starbucks bathrooms, and in the tiny, dirty back rooms of bars, our old sneakers sticking to the beer stained floor. Those were the best days of my life.

Then reality TV land happened. I felt like I was dropped onto a weird board game, dressed up, and pushed along with a roll of the dice. I didn’t know what The Voice was until I was knee-deep in it. I was on Season One, so I had the gift of walking in blind. I always tell people that if it had been season two, and I had seen the show, I never would have gone on. Not because it’s a terrible show — on the contrary, it was a lovely show and I made some amazing friends — but, reality TV was just never my way. Competition in music was weird to me. Being judged by every move I made was new to me. My manager told me to audition for this “show.” “I’m not sure what it is,” he said, “but you might as well. What do you have to lose?”

He was right. I was almost 22 years old, living in a dump in New York City with nothing but a mattress on the floor and a fold out lawn chair, and working at Crumb’s Bake Shop dishing out cupcakes and coffee to (sorry New York but) very impatient and often rude folks. Meg and Dia had just recorded a record, “Cocoon,” which cost us all our savings from tour and didn’t do very well on iTunes.

I flew to L.A. to audition for the show. At the time, there were, to my knowledge, 4 coaches, or something like that. No one had been confirmed. I didn’t know it was going to be this huge show. I didn’t know they were going to have mega superstars as coaches.

With luck and chance on my side, I got through the first round and was awestruck the entire time by the magnitude of it all. How did I get here?

During the interviews I would speak in great lengths about my band and our record out on iTunes, but when the editing folks got a hold of it, I was suddenly the “children’s book author from Utah,” and that was that. That was my story apparently. So, whatever, I just wanted to sing. But I was terrified. I had performed my whole life, but I had always performed with my sister. Now I was alone. On stage, in front of millions. Alone.

The aftermath of The Voice was good and bad. Good because I got picked up by Universal Records but bad because my band quickly fell apart. The record label wouldn’t take all of us since no one on the show knew anything about us, so I just tried to keep it under my name as a solo act, but with my band. But it turns out, that was easier said than done.

Our band slowly fell apart and my relationship with my sister turned distant and strained. It was never cruel, never cold, but more like…far away. My best friend and I had lost touch somehow, and I felt even more alone.

On Warped Tour just trying to stay cool. The weather every summer got very intense!

I turned to the bright lights of Hollywood to keep me company, but it turned out to be fickle and, as my favorite leading man Holden Caulfield would say, “phony.”

I made an album called RED. It was specially “crafted” by LA’s top writers and producers and was put out on Universal. I don’t mean to cut it down. I really don’t. My heart and soul went into that record, but it just so happens that my heart was half full and my soul was drained and missing something even though I didn’t know what it was.

The record did OK. It did especially well in Asia so I was over there a lot, much to my delight, since I adore South East Asia and I also adore traveling.

Then, a couple years later, I got dropped, and I moved on into ….this weird stretch of distant blue. A weird fog came over me. I stopped….caring. A year passed. Another year. Another year. “In the studio,” I’d Tweet. “Writing session today in Venice,” I’d Tweet. But who cares really? Did I?

I was a washed up, bitter ex-musician who used to have a future.

Now, a couple of years later, I’m just a (almost) 29 year old musician who writes songs during the day and works selling sausages and waiting tables at a food stall in Grand Central Market in Los Angeles. Almost every hour someone will come up to me and it is the same thing every time. It is either:

A) Weren’t you that one singer on The Voice? Oh, cool… We voted for you… Do you work here?… Um… yeah, I’ll get the fries instead of salad. B) Hey! I used to listen to Meg and Dia all the time. My brother and I used to love you guys! We used to jam your one song, what was it…it was like…uh… C) Hey. Are you….Dia? Dia Frampton? What are you doing working here?

I dreaded every time someone would come up to me. Not because I don’t like talking to people…trust me, every time someone says they listen to my music I feel nothing but gratitude. But here, behind the counter filling up the ketchup bottles, I just felt like a total failure.

I felt embarrassed. I felt useless.

I’d go to the studio for writing sessions and feel …like a second hand coat.

I had a big producer straight up say, “Oh, shit. You’re 29? I didn’t know you were THAT old…you look younger. You’re trying to put out a new album? That’s tough. Good luck.”

The thing is…he didn’t say that with malice. He said it in a matter-of-fact way, because in a lot of ways, with how the industry is, he’s right.