Vanessa Hamilton-Highfield:  

Life Hi There - Thanks for visiting my profile. I hope life has treated you well! My life didn't exactly turn out as planned, but it's been a wild, interesting ride. If you have time on your hands, here's the recap: I attended AR after high school with thoughts of getting a biz degree to help me run a dance studio. Instead, I met & married a singer/songwriter who was 5 years older, 2 inches shorter. I cried all the way down the aisle (which should've been my first clue). Three months later he confessed that he’d married me on the rebound, so we divorced. Off to a great start I was... I then attended CSUS. But when I won the Sacramento "Miss Pretty Legs" competition (Gloria Steinem I wasn't) in Oct '79, I decided to forego school and move to San Francisco. After a month there, I moved on to the miasma of Los Angeles, to "make it" in the entertainment industry. I was not prepared for the cutthroat atmosphere, nor open to the proverbial casting couch. I was also told I was "obese" by LA dance standards, so I developed the requisite eating disorder & lost 25 lbs. After a few months, I returned to Sacto with my tail between my legs. I answered an ad for dancers that turned out to be a "classy" alternative to "Take It Off." Oh, my father would've been proud… I became their lead dancer & choreographer til an auto accident broke my ankle & nose. I was quickly nearing the dancer's retirement age (25). I worked often as a secretary, while still taking occasional classes (this time at Sac City). I realized I had to choose a different path; something more tangible, more reliable, something like… music! It was at this point I ran into Tom Highfield, a guy I first met when I was 13. His sister and I attended dance classes together and he became a very dear friend. We dated once in high school (went bowling), but it was just weird - he was my friend, not my "date." After high school, we lost touch. However, after 8 years apart - sparks flew. We married 6 mos later (3/86). We were both ardent animal lovers (okay, I was MORE ardent at first, but Tommy shortly joined the club). We took in every stray dog we (or anyone else) found, had them altered & placed them in wonderful new homes. We realized we were in over our heads when we got a call from some nutcase saying that if we didn't take his dog immediately he was going to shoot it. Around this same time, Tommy and I became very involved in the Sacto music scene. Tom was a drummer and I had taken all the music classes Sierra College had to offer and received my A.A. We auditioned for "Stairway to Stardom" through Skip's music and were chosen to be in one of the bands. "Applesmash" (a name made up our guitarist's daughter) ended up winning the competition. We also won the chance to professionally record a 3-song EP (2 written by yours truly). We had a blast (though my marriage got a little rocky in there). Encouraged by the Stairway win, I decided to go into songwriting fulltime (starting to sense a pattern here?). I joined the NorCal Songwriter's Assoc. and became the Prez of the Sacto chapter. I put on the monthly competitions in various coffee houses/lounges. I also was in a couple bands doing mostly cover tunes just to help pay the bills, as songwriting became a notoriously money-sucking endeavour. I had three songs "picked up" by publishers-but none of them were ever recorded by a famous singer. I think the % of songwriter's that had a song picked up was hovering around 10%, so I felt decent about my ability to write, but it was obvious my chosen pr...Expand for more