7 years, 4 months ago Mike Moyers and Scott Hardy
Merci Neff's new CD launches at #50
There’s a family in Quincy who will remember Friday, December 9th as one of life’s special days. It’s the day Aaron and Christine's little girl Merci launched her first EP, Weight of the World.
Merci Neff, now a junior at Liberty University, was discovered by producer Chuck Dennie while working on an LP for The Crossing. He later contacted Merci and encouraged her to record her own solo album. “Weight of the World’ is the result of that conversation.
During a recent interview with WCOY’s Scott Hardy, Neff explained the process for her first-time endeavor.
“I was doing Skype writing with Nashville writers while I was at school last semester, during finals week. When I arrived in Nashville, I got to work with a couple more artists, including lyricists-and it was incredible. They were all great writers. Josh Varnadore and I wrote 4 songs on the EP-and he’s amazing! I had never written before, I didn’t know what to do. So he would do this thing where would say “Merci, I’m going to leave for seven minutes and when I get back you better have a verse.” It was hard, but I did it. It gave me an avenue to feel like I really could do it. You know, when you’re writing with people who do that for a living, you can feel really inadequate. So, it was neat for him to be like; “now I know what you’re trying to say, so let me re-word it so it sounds like a song”. That was cool.”
Neff is the daughter of Aaron Poage and Christine Jones Poage of Quincy. Mom, Dad and Merci’s brother, Kaleb, have been behind her music career all the way. And that support included spending two summers at the prestigious Berklee College of Music.
“It was incredible!”, Neff continued. “I’ve never been in an environment where music was the center of everything. I feel like sometimes being a music major-I can’t connect as well with people, because I connect through music-and so being surrounded by other people who connected through music as well was great. We would be walking down the hallways and there would be people there just playing and singing. Then people would jus jump in; random people you made friends with.”
And, having just listened to the CD, I can tell you you’ll like what you hear.
“It’s very TV / film like,” Neff explained. It’s stuff you would hear in movies or shows. There’s a little bit of a Ben Rector influence. People have been saying they’re hearing some Taylor Swift too. But Ben Rector was the main influence. We liked his style and feel."
Weight of the World launched at #50 on the iTunes Pop Album Chart this morning. Your copy is available at a number of different platforms including ITunes,The Crossing, Second String Music,and Krazy Cakes just to name a few.
Merci Neff; a name to remember and someone we should be paying attention to. And she’s from right here in Quincy.
