This past Tuesday, the Harbert College of Business hosted Auburn alumna and current Nashville recording artist Harper Grae. Grae was invited to campus as a speaker for the college’s Business of Music Speakers Series.
Born Shanna Henderson, Grae is from Reeltown, Alabama, a small town approximately twenty minutes outside of Auburn.
Grae said she never felt as though she fit the small town mold.
“I was the girl who grew up in the super small town and instead of going four-wheeler riding and paintball gun shooting, I would take my stuffed animals outside and have a stick and sing to them.” Grae said.
Grae mentioned several obstacles she had to overcome throughout her childhood that were sometimes frustratingly public, most notably the absence of her parents. She said living in a small town, everyone knew, or thought they knew, what was affecting her and how she should react. She took it as a challenge to be the best.
“I wanted to show everyone I wasn’t a product of what they thought I should be,” she said.
She strove for 100s, not mere straight A’s. She excelled in athletics, and she continued to be passionate about music.
Grae planned to swim competitively in college, but when three shoulder injuries snatched her scholarship, she joined Auburn’s softball team. However, a fourth shoulder injury her freshman year took her out of the game.
“So that was just door after door was shutting on my athletic career,” Grae said. “It was four years and every year I had another shoulder surgery, and that was what really opened the door for me to be able to do theater here.”
She immersed herself in her music and began to grow as an artist at Auburn. She found the advice of two Auburn professors particularly helpful in her journey. One professor, who taught in the same room in which Grae delivered her speech, was the first to tell Grae that she could not only pursue her passion but make a living doing it if she approached it the right way. Another professor offered this guidance:
“You’re going to get 500 ‘no’s’ before you get one ‘maybe.’”
“You’re going to hit a lot of failure, and you have to be able to answer that question – ‘Why am I doing this?’” Grae said. “Especially when you’re just getting hit with ‘no’ after ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ and ‘maybe’ again. You have to be able to go back to ‘Why am I doing this?’ And Auburn gave me the opportunity to answer that question honestly and authentically.”
She continued to work on her trade at Auburn, often writing and singing on a bench in Town Creek park. In her second semester of her senior year, Grae became a contestant on “The Glee Project,” a competition-based talent search show related to Fox series “Glee.” She did not win, but she did gain much experience. Fresh off the show, she decided to move to Nashville with nothing but her dreams and her dalmatian to search for her place in the music world.
“I was there for three months, and I wanted to go home,” Grae said.
It was her aunt, one who was not normally supportive of her music career because of the lack of financial stability, who encouraged her to stay.
“She said, ‘You’re giving it a year. You’re going to try to do this.” Grae said.
She tried to do it, and she succeeded. She built a team to support her (including a manager, entertainment attorney, and business manager), and she also built a name.
Grae cited her personal story, the same story that challenged her to succeed, as her largest inspiration for her work.
“It’s a lot easier for me to sing about it and write about it than it is to talk about,” Grae said.
Grae lost her mother this past December to substance abuse, and her next four songs are about that experience and moving forward in the midst of grief.
Her story is also what motivated her to begin a nonprofit, the Look Up Foundation, dedicated to helping grieving children and adolescents. She found her passion in helping grieving children and adolescents because much of her story is grieving the absence of her parents.
“Even though they hadn’t died, they weren’t there,” Grae said. “So I was really passionate about helping kids and adolescents and pouring back into them. We’re looking at helping kids who had not lost a parent to death but had lost a parent to incarceration or addiction and how that affects people because they’re still grieving that loss.”
Grae realized there were few resources for these grieving youths, and helping them became another of Grae’s passions.
Grae advised students to know why they are doing what they do, to find their “why’s.” She said her “why” is making sense of her experiences and pouring that back into people. She challenged students to set goals to achieve their “why’s” once they identify them.
“Find your why and then ask yourself how to go about it and then don’t be afraid of what you answer,” Grae said. “It’s been hard to get where I’m at, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
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