By Jean Sorensen

Pour yourself a cup of smokin’ hot java, kick back into an office chair for a 15-minute break and hit B.C. sales rep Heidi Vincent’s web site (www.heidivincent.com) to hear one of the newest, freshest and most powerful voices hitting the pop rock music scene today. Vincent, a full-timer with Sutton Group – West Coast Realty, has a voice that is pure, strong and free as a glassed sheet of curling ice.

But Vincent is a bit mysterious, too. Her voice tugs at some past memory strings, reminding one of a great crooner from the past. The crooner’s name seems just out of memory’s grasp until you realize it’s her own unique voice built on the rock-solid base of the old music industry greats. Vincent started singing as a child in her room while listening to Patsy Cline, Elvis and others. When family, guests and friends arrived, she would be seconded into performing family favourites.

“I was singing for them all the time,” she says. Her “Nana’s favourite” was Elvis’s tune Are You Lonesome Tonight?, while her mother’s pick was Cline’s classic I Fall to Pieces. It’s a long leap from old classic rock to modern pop rock, and a tough slog. But Vincent has done it, often bypassing the opportunity as a young adult to spend time with pals to work on her music career, all poured into a 10-year span and two CDs.

The songs are her own compositions, penned between Open Houses and tending to real estate clients.

Her debut CD, Happy Now, sold out in the first year with an initial run of 2,000, and the reorder of another 500 is nearly gone. Fans have also been downloading her tunes or the full CD from her website, and from popular sites such as CD Baby, iTunes, and Amazon.com.

Happy Now is a collection of inspirational songs telling of life’s lids and loops. “They are semi-autobiographical,” Vincent says. “They are about the things that happen to everyone, emotions that happen to everyone.” She says she wanted a CD that listeners could hear and say, “I’ve been through this.” And more importantly, they have come through the ordeal.

If the caffeine experience in the office listening to Vincent seems a little déjà vu, blame it on Starbucks. Its in-store music (from its satellite radio station servicing North America) has picked up some of the tunes from the Happy Now CD, playing them in rotation in their stores.

“I called the music director and asked if he would like to check out my stuff,” Vincent says. She sent a CD and he called back to say he “loved it”. Now, four tunes are played in a string of Starbucks coffee shops throughout North America.

Her material has also been played as background music on a Fox series about women in extreme sports and CBC radio, and she’s also appeared in a B.C. Institute of Technology film, doing a spot as a singer in the background of a scene. Recently, a favourable review of her CD appeared in The Province, one of Canada’s largest newspapers.

Vincent’s initial music success is a result of her own hard work on the business side. She used music industry friends to back up her songs and cut the CDs, and good old-fashioned networking to get it distributed. Pulling it together has been a solo act. She has no manager, no press agent and no distribution source. And, because of her busy real estate career, she gave up performing live years ago, so she doesn’t have the nightly or weekend gigs to keep her name out there and her CD selling. Despite all this, more music fans in their 20s to late 40s are discovering her website.

She has also resisted doing gigs as a “cover song” styled band where the focus is on performing other artists’ material. “You get so wrapped up and your stuff just goes by the wayside,” she says, adding her evenings off are spent writing new songs for her third CD, expected to hit the market some time in early 2010.  On a good night, she’s able to write up to four songs.  But, as a new single mother, she admits those evenings often give way to her daughter’s demands.

“I feel I am so very lucky,” she says of her support from friends, the fans who visit her site and her daughter, who has added a new dimension to her life.

Vincent spends her spare time looking for more breaks, scouring the Internet for new contacts, distribution houses for her product, and contacts that can help her. “And, I need more real estate referrals,” she says, so she can get that third CD to market. One of the big changes in the music business is that publishing houses have replaced recording studios for distribution of artists’ product.  They push product into major big box outlets like Future Shop. Many artists are really running small businesses as they handle multi-facets of the business. Vincent would love to find a manager and a distributor to ease the load so she can focus more on the artistic side when she’s not closing real estate deals. She says she would love to hear from other real estate professionals at her day job website, www.homeswithheidi.ca.

And she hopes they will tell a friend about her tunes, over the next coffee break.