Defoe was born in Southern California and grew up on a steady diet of golden oldies from her father’s radio, classical music, motion picture soundtracks and artists like Patsy Cline, Connie Frances, The Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Motown sound, along with composers such as Ennio Morricone.
Her parents saw her immense talent early on and encouraged her at a tender age. Bi-weekly voice lessons, piano lessons, and winning singing competitions led to recording her own music at age 9. At age 13 she made a record for the Philippines with the song ‘Bakit Ba Ganyan’ following a countrywide successful radio tour.
By the time she was 16, Defoe was being groomed to become a country pop artist with a different name, working with songwriters like Jeff Silbar (who wrote – “Wind Beneath My Wings”), and Nicole Renee. Collaborating closely with Grammy-nominated producer/mixer Bruce Sugar (Ringo Star, Paul McCartney, Joe Walsh), and several top studio musicians such as Leland Sklar on bass (Carol King and Dolly Parton), Michael Bearden (former musical director for Michael Jackson and now Lady Gaga) and Jim Cox on piano (Elton John, B. B. King) enabled her to learn from some of the most talented people in the business.
@whatisDefoe [rotatingtweets screen_name=’whatisDefoe’]The project ultimately ended, when Defoe realized she couldn’t pretend to be something she was not. Having lost a little of herself along the way, Defoe was then determined to discover who she was as an artist. She bought a Neumann TLM 103, some Bx8a M-audio speakers, a powerful computer, locked herself in her new studio for a few years.
She started exploring the mysteries of music. Not interested in the typical things teenage girls were into she discovered many exotic instruments, the melodica, thumb pianos and even found use recording with child instruments and xylophones.
At age 23 Defoe moved to Los Angeles and began school at the Musician’s Institute for Music Engineering to master her craft. Here she became fluent in the supernatural world of what we call Pro-Tools and other high-end recording software. Through those years she loved helping other struggling artists with their music and helping them reach their full potential while working on crafting her music in the background.
By the time Defoe was 27, she had built a vast catalog of over one hundred songs ready to be shared with the world.
While working on an album with producer Lee Miles as a vocal editor, she met Ronnie Winter, singer/songwriter of The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. For a brief moment, she put her career on hold as they fell in love and traveled the world together while also acting as his guest vocalist. A year and a later, they decided to get married.
Ronnie was impressed with Angela’s work and hired her on his next album “4” in 2014 as a lead vocal engineer. After the successful release of the record, Defoe was back at work polishing off what would soon become her debut full-length LP. Just as she was starting to make some headway with editing the rough drafts she discovered (while on tour w/Ronnie In the Philippines) that she was pregnant!
Once again production was halted and nine months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy they named Wolfgang after the great composer. After recovering from complicated and dangerous labor, she used music to help her recover from almost losing her life to bring a new one into this world. Sometimes running the mixing board while breastfeeding, she was compelled to achieve balance with being a new mom, a wife and staying productive and true to her passion.
In 2017 before they could even start tracking, she was offered another amazing opportunity. Director Dylan Reynolds was a previous fan of her music, having been her neighbor and hearing her work from across the hall on his cigarette breaks. He enlisted her to write music for his horror/slasher film “420 Massacre.” In the span of two months, she set up a studio in the babies playroom, grabbed her detuned viola and plastic recorder and made a remarkable, critically-acclaimed score which was released in 2018.
Impressed by her work on their previous album, Ronnie asked her to co-produce the next The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus record with him. That album, ‘The Awakening’ was very well-received, with the second single “On Becoming Willing” hitting 12 weeks at #1 on Billboard Christian Rock Radio.
Eventually, with the encouragement of her husband, she would return to work on her own music. She found all her old hard drives and started sifting through her material. With the assistance of a group of very talented studio musicians, and utilizing all the knowledge and skills she had developed over the years, she produced the album “Too Soon to Cry” which will finally be released on July 1st via Angela and Ronnie’s own company A + R Productions.
Defoe says, “ Now that my album is finally coming out, I’ve been feeling blissfully reflective. All the painful things that brought me strife in this journey thus far – I’m starting to see the purpose and even the necessities of them to get me to this point. I’m very proud of myself and wished that that little girl I was back them could see me now…I think she would be more confident in her choices. I think she would be glowing with excitement to know that she would one day grow up to be a badass.”
“Defoe is no cookie cutter artist. To the contrary, her music is both dark and playful, textured with cinematic sounds, earthy real instruments, and intricately layered vocals. Her lyrics tell stories that compliment the mood set by her interesting musical soundscapes. Do yourself a favor and have a listen to this unorthodox musical artist.”
– BRUCE SUGAR, Grammy-nominated mixer (Ringo Star, Paul McCartney, Joe Walsh)
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