I glanced at the photograph sent by her publicist and decided, yes, she is potentially going to replace Sela Ward as the woman of my fantasies.  Then I heard her voice with it’s gentle British accent.  After speaking with her in a disjointed interview caused by the “DSL gentleman” who needed to disconnect the phone mid-interview and as we ran the gauntlet of cell phone reception high and lows from somewhere amid the hills around Los Angeles, I was positive that not only had she irrevocably replaced Sela in my heart and mind, but given the chance, I would like to spend much more time with her discussing nothing and everything.

On October 11, 2009, Billie Myers provided her soulful rendition of “America, the Beautiful” accompanied by the saxophone of Dave Koz at the Equality March on Washington and shouted, “I stand here as a very proud member of the LGBT community.  I will not be defined by anyone else!”

Billie Myers’ discovery is one of legend.  She was a patron dancing on the dance floor of a nightclub in London when legendary producer Peter Q. Harris asked if she also sang.  Soon thereafter, Universal Records signed her and her first CD, Growing Pains, with its smash hit Kiss the Rain which shot up the charts in 1997.  Her follow-up effort, Vertigo, released in 2000, met with critical acclaim, but didn’t perform well enough for Universal to keep her on.

After a long hiatus and rising from the ashes of her depression, this year she released Tea & Sympathy under her own label Fruit Loop Records.

Billie was raised in Coventry, England to an English mother and Jamaican father.  At age four, she was sent to foster care.  Racism was ever-present in her tumultuous growing up in the early 1970s in England.  Her younger years were punctuated with trips home and then back into foster care with a foster mother who didn’t particularly care for black people.  At age 12, she lived with her father again, but basically marked time there until she finished school.  By 16, she was attending nursing school.  After stints nursing and working in the insurance industry, she started off on her musical adventure.

LH:  Your legendary discovery is amazing!  And then you released, “Kiss the Rain.”  After its success, it was just gone.

Billie:  Yeah, it was really a hard time.  During the time of Kiss the Rain it was kind of like a fairy tale.  At the time that didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t always like that because that’s all I knew.   You have a degree of success and it’s kind of addictive.  You start to measure yourself by that success, especially when it’s a public success.  And then they know there’s no follow up to that, and then you start looking at yourself like, ‘One hit wonder, what a failure.’

LH: So, people latch onto people who have fame and detach just as quickly.  That had to be startling to have people just disappear overnight.

Billie:  I wasn’t the easy person to be around.  When my world came crashing down, and when you’re majorly depressed, you’re not necessarily the nicest person to be around.  You’re not fun, your not social, you’re not communicative and you’re not a good friend.  Some of them were just gone and some of them were gone because they couldn’t cope with the bad place that I was in.

LH: But, some did stay around and they identified that you were struggling beyond a point where you were personally safe anymore.  Do you think that you might have been able to get through that time without those people?

Billie:  No, I wouldn’t be here without those people.

The realm of what is considered normal when you’re in that place is misconstrued and very warped, but it makes sense at that time.  I joke about it – I gave away my stage clothes and musical equipment.  Everything related to music had to be out of my life, because in my mind, I wasn’t writing, I didn’t have a career, I wasn’t singing and I was involved in a nasty legal dispute that was draining any money I did have and it was a done deal, so give everything away.  But, at the time it made perfect sense.  Why bother getting out of bed, I didn’t have a life.  Why go out, because people would ask me what I’m doing, and I was doing nothing.

People telling you might not be well and at some point you stop returning their phone calls so they stop calling and then you think your friends don’t care.  And, you forget you spent the last two years not calling them back.  It’s very warped.

LH:  You’ve obviously had some success in working through the depression.  It sounds like you’re looking at things from a really healthy perspective.

Billie:  I live with depression.  I’ve probably had some depression all of my life.  I have great friends around me.  I have good days and I have bad days.  I made a decision with this record.  I knew everyone would ask me what I’ve been doing since 2002.  It wasn’t like I could say I was doing charity work or something.  I didn’t want to concoct some story.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell the truth.

Right now, everyone is being lovely about being open.  I’m doing work with the Jed Foundation who work with people to age 25 on depression awareness.  But, the very first time I read an article written by someone with no awareness of depression or when they make some negative reference to my Fruit Loop label, I probably am not going to feel very strong that day.

The first time I have a disagreement when I’m strong-minded about something, I’m afraid that they’ll say, ‘Yeah, you’re depressed.”  A year from now there may be people who are not nice about it because they don’t believe that depression exists and that you should be pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.  And, you know what?  There’s a large percentage of people of the world that are like that.  That you should be able to pull yourself out of it.

LH:  What are you doing with the Jed Foundation?

Billie:  The founder’s son committed suicide.  In his memory, he started the foundation.  I’m doing a little PSA and putting a bit of a face on depression.  I’m going to do my little bit and talk to some college kids.  And more importantly to therapists and parents and friends on what it feels like and what is or isn’t constructive and what to be aware of.  The truth is that if I were to fall into a deep depression next week, I’d be the last one to know.

LH:  I hope your single is a big hit – the entire disc is just dripping with emotion, every single track.  It just seems you are an incredible romantic.

Billie: It’s interesting that you say that.  Because I think I am.  People who know me don’t agree with me. I may be disappointed but maybe that is because my bar is the perfect romance and romanticism of what life should be.  Don’t say that to my friends because they’d roll their eyes at that and say, ‘Have you heard her songs?’

LH: You know, you love and you lose, and it wouldn’t hit you like that, you couldn’t write lyrics like that unless you were a romantic.

Billie:  I’m giving your phone number to my friends.

You can listen to tracks form Billie’s new album at her website:  http://www.billiemyers.com

I hate my job – interviewing smokin’ hot women with both brain and heart!