Take a look behind the concert stage with Midwestern, song writer Teri Underhill. The 21-year-old blends her Hawaiian heritage and growing up in Iowa through her music and spoken poetry.
Transcript
TERI UNDERHILL: My teacher made a girl force a smile always be in denial choir made me this free today. That’s okay, I’ll stay a while. I was a very quiet kid. I emailed my teacher and I was like, You know, I keep having this dream where I perform in front of the whole school.
And it’s true. I had that dream since I was like five, or I’d perform at like an assembly or something. And I told her about this dream. And the next day I came to school and she, like, set it up for me to perform.
They had never heard me sing before. For them to just kind of put their faith in to a very quiet kid was kind of funny thinking back on it. But I think I’m an alright singer, so I think they made a good choice.
They set it up for like lunchtime in front of the whole fourth grade. And I remember I brought my little I had a little iCarly microphone that plugged into a tiny little amp I had with my pink stereo.
And I sang Michael Jackson’s Earth Song. And I remember I had this whole speech in a notebook that I was going to read and I never got to. But it was about like, the earth is sick and needs our help.
Global warming is happening. I was like a nine year old I wish time could just stop. And I could just turn back the clock. My music’s like a diary, I always say that it’s like a public diary. The way I write is just pouring my heart out.
And I just. It’s like it just floods out of me. And I just start writing, writing, writing, writing. And then when I stop, that’s in. That’s the end of the song. That’s the end of a poem. That’s just the end of it.
I’m a very emotional person. I’m kind of driven on my emotions. A lot of my music is very like sassy and in your face, and I don’t care about you because a lot of times that’s like the feelings I have like that I don’t let out.
When it comes to songwriting, it’s like. It’s like a whole other version of me. My lyrics and my stories are honest, whether I like them to be or not. It’s like a therapy, almost like I. I always think because of I have anxiety.
I always think of, like, outcomes and possibilities of like every little thing. There are people out there that may not know how to put their feelings into words. And I was definitely like that for a lot of my life.
But through music, I’m able to describe how I’m feeling much better than how I can speak. All you want to do is get drunk All you want, all you wanna do is get drunk. All you wanna, all you wanna do is get drunk. Yeah. They say he never good enough. I always said I was like a singer songwriter but I’m not someone that really likes to be boxed into anything. Growing up in a diverse household, my dad listening to metal music and rock music, and then my mom coming in with like R&B, pop, hip hop and Hawaiian music.
A lot of times I like to add like Hawaiian Island flair to how I sing. Like sometimes people will say I sound like reggae because of when I sing, there’s a certain tone of how I sing or like how I say certain words.
And a ukulele is not a Hawaiian instrument, but it’s a big instrument in Hawaii. I like to wear red when I perform. I don’t know why. Like they always say, like red and fire. There’s a fire goddess named Pele in Hawaii where they say, like, she’s the volcanoes.
Now, my hula skirt is called a pa’u skirt cause hula is a huge thing for me with my music. Learning chants. And I do hula every Sunday, understanding like the issues in Hawaii that they’re having, like there’s indigenous issues over there and it’s it’s a lot of studying, but it’s is something I feel like I must do.
And I love doing also just studying it all. I’m still like that to this day where if I see a little thing or something, no matter how tiny it is, I’m going to do it because I-I saw it. If I can’t see it, I can’t do it. And I tell my fourth grade self to perform to just to do it, to push yourself. If you have a glimpse of doing it, then do it.
