The unnerving stillness of the last year was almost unbearable, but the changing external environment afforded many artists a unique window of opportunity to hyper focus on projects and career decisions while deeply examining relationship to art and self.

This long pandemic summer gave Hamtramck based artist Tammy Lakkis a chrysalis to push her sound to new limits, assert agency over her art, and fit the puzzle pieces of herself into a standout debut EP on the Portage Garage Sounds record label (Hamtramck, MI.)

This is a story about someone who puts in the work. “I’ve been singing since I was a baby!” Lakkis says. Getting into music at an early age, Tammy Lakkis has worn the hats of poet, lead vocalist, songwriter, producer, DJ, DJ instructor, guitarist and creative director, and more. She recounts earlier times playing guitar to herself repeatedly singing Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” and playing around singing in styles of popular artists of the early 2000s.

Fast forward many years, bands, projects, and instruments later, Tammy is working on her live set as a producer and singer. Playing in local mainstays like UFO factory, she describes her process, “I really got into the live set thing when I got an Electribe sampler. From there I would form the main parts of my songs, creating loops and singing over them over and over until I found what I liked. I had a few songs but about at least 5 versions of each, and from there I was able to make some initial decisions on what sounded best and record some demos.”

At this stage, Lakkis was working in a more fluid and improvisational way, with foundations from her live set. Adding those bedrocks to the freedom to re-shape and style her vocals and cadence through a new opportunity, Lakkis blended her own expressive style with some of her contemporary influences (like late nights dancing to deep house music at Motor City Wine in the before times.) Around the same time Lakkis was making her rounds on the live set circuit and solidifying demos, Hamtramck based record label Portage Garage Sounds saw her live performance and offered an opportunity to put this intoxicating and distinctive sound on wax.

Working with indie record label Portage Garage Sounds, Tammy’s big challenge from moving past the demo stage to the record many of you have today was narrowing down her bouquet of songs and making tough decisions on what to keep and what to cut for the 4-track EP. Portage Garage Sounds assisted her in the difficult process of choosing songs for the record and narrowing down which ones to pick out of all the raw material she had prepared in the past.

“The whole process is confusion! It is a big practice in decision making. I had so much freedom to make decisions but it really boiled down to asking questions like what do I like vs. what is going to add to the whole of the record and make it feel complete? How do I take multiple versions of the same song and take all of the best elements of the different versions to make one final song? Tammy thanks her collaborators at PGS for offering guidance and her family for their support in this process.

Through the freedom given by the label and the plethora of demos, Lakkis felt a heightened consciousness and gained new perspective on the direction she wanted to go with her debut. Combining a lifelong journey in music and a diverse palette of influences with the agency to sing, write, and produce her debut sound, she gained a profound awareness of where she wants to take her music career. What a thing to notice!

The Notice EP is a soulful, mesmeric, funky, deep and dance-able record with bass lines for days and enchanting siren-like vocals and songwriting. It’s the result of a lifelong dedication to music, a rare pandemic summer, the empowerment of an indie label and a powerful and eclectic artist in charge of her own future. Take notice of this multi talented visionary in control of her own destiny.

Notice EP available now on Spotify, Apple Music, the Portage Garage Sounds Bandcamp and a record shop near you.

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