Lady Daisey Traynham

Florida-Based Indie Musician Finds her Funk

Sep 13, 2009 Devan Stuart

Growing up on the road in a Winnebago that housed her parents' Top 40 cover band, Daisey Traynham had music in her blood from the get-go.

Daisey Traynham stood center stage, belting out her own renditions of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and Sister Sledge hits before she could add two and two. So it's no surprise - to anyone but her - that twenty years later, she's still on the road making music.

“Music has always been a part of my life and I’ve always had a passion for it,” saysTraynham in a recent interview with Suite101.com. “But I never for a second thought I’d do anything big with it.”

Today, Traynham has her own brand of music. The 1980s covers of her childhood have given way to a trademark alternative soul sound that manages a deep soulfulness and a light playfulness at the same time. If it's possible for a voice to mimic the simultaneous intensity and light of sunshine, Traynham's does it. And her music perfectly matches her personality and life perspective, encouraging fans to "plant some funky flowers in your soul," as her tagline goes.

Still, her current career got off to a (romantically) rough start.

Two Musicians Join to Make a "Heavenly Noise"

It was open-mic Tuesday at the Voodoo Lounge, downtown Jacksonville bar in 2003. The DJ that night was Britt Traynham, an accomplished musician in his own right, know to the Jax locals as "Batsauce."

“I had had a couple of beers and was feeling a little ballsy, so I grabbed the mic and started singing,” Traynham says. “Later, Britt handed me his phone number and said, ‘Let me know if you want to hook up and make a heavenly noise.' But the next day, I lost my voice. I went totally mute for a month. So we just hung out for a while and absolutely fell in love."

Eventually, her voice came back and the two, indeed, began making lovely music together. They became not only the musical duo called "Heavenly Noise," but man and wife in 2004. As a solo artist, Traynham is “a perfect mesh of old school and new millennium, like if Billie Holiday and Macy Gray were to collab,” says one reviewer. Her collaborations with Britt as Heavenly Noise have a sound described as “somewhere between Janis Joplin and Run DMC.”

The two also join fellow Jacksonville performer DJ Therapy as The Smile Rays. The group has become a vital part of the Southeast U.S. indie music scene and in 2008-2009, toured Europe via The Smile Rays' record deal with Berlin-based Jakarta Records. Along the way they shared their travels with fans and friends via a series of videos and new tunes posted to their MySpace, Facebook and YouTube pages.

She's What They Call a "Triple Threat"

Besides being an increasingly accomplished singer, Traynham also is a talented guitarist and a web designer nationally recognized by GirlGeeks.com. Via her company, Firefly Multimedia, Traynham designs websites, user interfaces and CD packaging among other things.

And had the Hollywood bug caught, she might well have been a regular on the silver screen. Remember the little girl who blew up Buford T. Justice's patrol car in 1983's "Smokey and the Bandit Part 3?" That was Traynham, then nine years old and living with her family on a houseboat at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla. marina.

“One day, I was catching shrimp in the marina, totally dirty and I saw this sign that said ‘casting office,'" Traynham recalls. “In my complete innocence I said, 'Hey, you guys got any parts in this movie for a cute little kid like me?'"

The casting department was immediately taken with the scruffy little girl from across the bay - enough to write her into the film. Today, Traynham has her own film series of sorts.

"I was just doodling on my computer one day and along comes Phonobot," she says of the two-dimensional, galaxy cruising character she created in a moment of spontaneous creativity. "He's on a galactic quest to find the funk."

Her doodling since has morphed into a series of storyboard stills that Traynham is considering developing into a children’s book or TV/Web TV series with a self-empowering message. She’s already selling a series of Phonobot pins on her Firefly website, plans a line of T-shirts and is researching the toy manufacturing process in hopes that Phonobot just might become the next character-driven merchandising enterprise – a positive plaything that both kids and parents will dig.

"Everybody has their own definition of what funk is," Traynham explains. "Maybe you dress funky or maybe something smells funky. In any case, the funk is within you. You have to find your own funk inside you, be yourself and just be funky."

The copyright of the article Lady Daisey Traynham in Indie Music is owned by Devan Stuart. Permission to republish Lady Daisey Traynham in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.