After playing at sold-out arenas, playing on a college campus during its “Rock, Rap, and Rawhide” pre-concert carnival would seem less intriguing to many-unless you’re Alex Winston.
“It’s actually really cool, because I get to meet a lot of people,” Winston said. “I started a music career right out of high school … It’s nice to be around people my age.”
The 20-year-old from Detroit has served as the opening act for a variety of musicians, including old school rockers Ted Nugent and Chuck Berry and new-age leading ladies Kate Voegele and Michelle Branch.
“What I like most about playing with all these acts is that I get to be around different crowds,” Winston said. “My sound definitely changed … I don’t want to hit one target audience, I want everyone to be my target audience.”
Playing with such a wide variety of acts has helped Winston to grow and develop her sound and gave her a chance to learn from some of the best. Learning about stage presence from Nugent and Berry was a great experience, and an important point in her career, she said.
In addition to working with some of rock’s biggest names, Winston’s songs have also garnered her a fair amount of fame. The CW’s “One Tree Hill,” FX’s “Dirt” and Oxygen’s “The Bad Girl’s Club” have all featured Winston’s tunes in recent episodes.
“Any exposure you can get is awesome, and it seems to be going really well,” she said.
Growing fame tends to have a price, however, a fact that Winston discovered upon entering the music industry.
In her music video for “Everything You Wanted,” Winston portrays the music industry as a place of conformity, following a musician who is trying to break through in a world that features agents and label executives trying to fit her into popular female musician stereotypes.
“It’s all in good fun … [but] when I started doing this, I would appear in a lot of these situations,” Winston said. “People were telling me I’m too this for that and too that for this … Everyone’s opinion seemed to contradict everyone else’s opinion.”
As a result, Winston and her band started producing their own albums and managing themselves, as opposed to signing with a record label.
“We get tours by ourselves, we put out CDs by ourselves … It’s really nice,” she said. “We don’t have to answer to anyone but ourselves.”
In the past, Winston has worked closely with Chris and Drew Peters, brothers who have written and produced songs for artists like Nugent, Kid Rock and the Black Eyed Peas.
“They’ve been able to teach me things and to avoid a lot of the cliché, bad scenarios you can wind up in,” Winston said. “They’re kind of like my surrogate parents.”
The Peters brothers will be joining Winston on stage Saturday, April 26, accompanying her as part of her band. In addition to Winston’s performance, The Rescue and Red Morning Blue will also be playing for the Spring Fever carnival crowd.
“It’s going to be really high energy and a lot of fun,” Winston said. “I don’t breathe fire or anything … [but] it won’t be a boring show; I can promise that.”
More information on Winston and, as well as samples of her songs, can be found at www.myspace.com/alexwinston.
