{"id":14514,"date":"2016-06-15T11:24:31","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T15:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=14514"},"modified":"2016-06-15T11:24:31","modified_gmt":"2016-06-15T15:24:31","slug":"leah-daniels-looking-forward-to-hometown-love-at-aurora-music-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/leah-daniels-looking-forward-to-hometown-love-at-aurora-music-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Leah Daniels looking forward to hometown love at Aurora Music Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fresh off being named Female Artist of the Year at the Country Music Association of Ontario last month, singer Leah Daniels is looking forward to receiving some hometown love \u2013 or close enough \u2013 when she takes the stage June 25 at the inaugural Aurora Music Festival. <\/p>\n

Ms. Daniels, a native of Uxbridge and a favourite of the annual Wild, Wild West Hoedown, is a feature performer at the Highland Park event, which will also feature The Road Heavy, local youth talent, and headliner band The Good Brothers.<\/p>\n

While she says she\u2019s excited to leave her mark on what is hoped by organizers to become an annual event, she is also excited to have something of a homecoming next Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am looking forward to having a lot of family and friends in the audience,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t always have that ability if I am doing a show that is further away, so it is always awesome to do something that is closer to home!\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in a musical home, not pursuing a career in music was never an option Ms. Daniels considered. It was just something inside of her, she said, and when the time came to choose her career path after high school, there certainly wasn\u2019t a fork in the road.<\/p>\n

She performed and entered competitions wherever she could, formed bands, and studied musical theatre and jazz at Sheridan College, and it is there she met many of the musicians currently in her band.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinding Leah was almost the hardest part,\u201d she says of developing as a country artist. \u201cIn developing your craft, you often imitate your favourite artists and that is exactly what I was doing. I was imitating Shania Twain, and I loved Celine Dion\u2019s voice, so I started imitating her, but it wasn\u2019t until I started writing my own music that I would discover my own voice. I wasn\u2019t writing for a specific genre, but it wasn\u2019t until a friend listened and said these could be country songs that [I realised] they totally were! That is how I decided to focus in on the country genre.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evidently it was a good fit. Although someone once told her that if there was something else she wanted to do, that she should do it because the career of an artist is a challenging, 24-hour-a-day job, she knew she was on the right track. This was only driven home further when she picked up her award from the Country Music Association of Ontario.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe timing was perfect because I had just released by latest single, Your Kiss Is Killing Me, to the radio the week before,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen the award happened, it was perfect because it definitely helps build that momentum. My job as an artist is to take people to another place for a little bit while I am performing so they can forget about their worries and the stresses of their jobs, and that kind of thing. <\/p>\n

\u201cI am trying to think of all those things when trying to craft a set list that is fun and takes them on an emotional journey. I hope people [at the Aurora Music Festival] come away feeling inspired and happy, and they have kind of forgotten about life for a little bit, that I was able to take them in completely and capture them on this musical journey together.\u201d<\/p>\n

To join Leah and the rest of the Aurora Music Festival on this journey, tickets for the June 25 event, which runs from 12 noon to 9 p.m. are now on sale. For more, visit www.auroramf.com.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Fresh off being named Female Artist of the Year at the Country Music Association of Ontario last month, singer Leah Daniels is looking forward to receiving some hometown love \u2013 or close enough \u2013 when she takes the stage June 25 at the inaugural Aurora Music Festival. Ms. Daniels, a native of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/2016-06-16-08.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3M6","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 05:38:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}