Nearly 25 years after exploding into our pop-rock consciousness with her critically acclaimed, platinum selling debut Union, two Grammy nominations (including one for Best New Artist) and an east coast tour with childhood idol Bob Dylan, singer-songwriter Toni Childs emerged a few years ago with a brilliant new album Keep The Faith and a message for our time.
Beyond affirming her role as an important voice of inspiration for an entirely new generation, Keep The Faith is her first album since a full self-healing induced recovery from Graves disease.
In 2013 she releases Citizens of the Planet, music and a state-of-the-art live experience devised by Toni Childs.
Music meets TED talks meets celebration meets evolution!
Keep The Faith marked a long-awaited creative resurgence with producers David Tickle and David Ricketts. Tickle was the main producer of Union. Ricketts co-wrote and associate produced many of the tracks on Union and was Childs’ co-producer and co-writer on her 1991 follow-up House of Hope. The two were also credited producers on her massively popular 1996 compilation The Very Best Of Toni Childs, the fifth biggest selling album in Australia that year (with over 500,000 copies sold), which featured her riveting cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers To Cross.”
Thousands of Childs’ fans worldwide who had been wondering when she’d do a fourth studio album (her last, 1994’s The Woman’s Boat, earned her another Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Performance) can credit Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues and Until The Violence Stops fame) with inspiring the singer to dig deep again and let the emotions that had been brewing for so many years come out. Childs, who had been involved in numerous charitable activities since moving to Kauai soon after her diagnosis (Free Kauai), was acting in a local production of The Vagina Monologues to raise money for the island’s YWCA Sexual Assault Treatment Center when Ensler, a longtime fan of Childs’ music, showed up one night to check out the show. They fast became friends and by night’s end, Ensler asked Toni to write an anthem for Until The Violence Stops.
Childs, a native of Southern California who signed her first publishing deal with Island Music in London in 1981, was moved by Enlser’s encouragement to return to music for a great cause. Eve hit a chord with the artist by providing a lofty goal, to write a song that would inspire people to end the violence that is inflicted on women and children for all time. In contemplating Eve’s request, Childs had an insight that if violence was really going to end against women and children, then women first needed to stop inflicting violence upon themselves through low self esteem.
In the years between being diagnosed with Graves disease (a serious thyroid disorder) and getting her music career back on track, Childs learned the value and emotional and physical healing power of self-love. Committing to a simpler lifestyle, she bought a 4.5 acre property and became an organic farmer on Kauai, Hawaii. In early 2012 she moved to northern NSW with her Australian husband Mik Lavage.
Citizens of the Planet:
Toni describes herself, “I am a human being, a citizen of the planet, a woman, a singer, a song writer, a story teller, a self healer, a dreamer, a believer, a seeker, a lover, a visionary, a beauty, a crier, a shouter, a love pusher, a hallelujah pie maker, a dancer, a flyer, a swimmer with dolphins, a jumper for joy, a heart you can climb into, a freedom fighter, a lightening diver, a tree house liver, a farmer, a cultivator, a thumper, a bad guitar player, a cook, a chef, a dolphin, a tree, a star, and a bee, a laugh and a giggle, a dog and a wiggle, a joke and a smoke, a drink and blink, a run and a walk, a choke and a sweet talk. I will meet you and greet you, I will hug you and tug you, I will love you and plug you, I will see you and lead you, I will give large and live large, I will care and I will stare down an issue, I will fight for the love of the planet, I will fight for my love of you, I will send signals of freedom, I shoot arrows of desire, I yell when I’m really mad, and I cry when I am confused, I laugh when I’m not trusted and jump when I’m told not to. I see possibility when others don’t, I take risks and not for kicks, I live my dream, and I run to meet what’s possible. I want to walk on the water, walk on the seas, I want to live my desires, I want to set myself free, I want to drink from the lovers’ cup, and drink it all up, I want to blast the doors off the hinges to my personal cage of limitation!
For further information on Toni Childs:
http://www.tonichilds.com/