Featured Songwriter Sheri Miller

There's a reason why New York's Sheri Miller was a runner-up in BOTH categories (Pop and Country) in the 2008 Durango Songwriters "Write With A Hit-Maker" songwriting contest...actually there are TWO: She entered BOTH categories (many songwriters only enter material in one or the other) AND...she is REALLY REALLY GOOD. Sheri's new collection of songs produced by Michael Patzig, entitled Mantra, is a great piece of work. Fine songs, very well done...a listening pleasure for sure. —mrJack

FROM SheriMiller.com

While at the University of Pennsylvania studying literature and poetry (in the same class as r&b singer John Legend) Sheri began to sing with a local Philly blues band, while secretly sculpting her own songs, tucked away in her tiny bedroom. But one Sunday afternoon, something magical happened to Sheri, completely changing her life.

"I had been writing songs in my room for months, which was a 20-minute walk from the Penn jazz music room, which had all the practice pianos. And I knew I was definitely not writing enough each day because it was such a big hassle to walk those long blocks downtown. Over the next couple of months, I started dreaming steadily at night about keyboards, about buying a used keyboard. I clearly remember one Saturday night in particular, I had an extremely vivid dream about this small black, white and gray Casio keyboard. The next morning I woke up with the image of the keyboard still clear in my mind, and took a different, more scenic route that day, through an underpass of green trees. So I’m walking, and there’s this one-day church sale, where they had the exact Casio keyboard I had dreamed of the night before. I quickly ran to the ATM, bought the keyboard for $20 and started seriously writing my songs on that sweet, broken-keyed Casio from that day on."

"Since then, I believe coincidences are just visible lines in our destiny."