Larisa Bryski, By Night

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Larisa Bryski is ambitious. "Every spare minute" is spent trying to make the music thing happen. "The only limit that there is for me is time." she says. "Fortunately the band has been together for four years and we're still doing okay."

Many would say more than okay. Bryski won the Female Vocalist in the 2004 Sammies and her music was described in the Sacramento News and Review as "...an updated, female-fronted Aerosmith. It's that rocking..." Speaking of rocking-- In March The Larisa Bryski Band, which includes her guitarist singer husband Willie Seltzer, will be hob-nobbing it with some of the very best in the business when they take part in the enormously important South by Southwest conference where hundreds of bands from all over the country will swarm into Austin, Texas and spend nearly a week performing, talking, selling, schmoozing, jamming and generally inspiring fine music together. DMI is flying The Larisa Bryski Band out there to perform in a couple of showcases, see the iconic Robert Plant as the keynote speaker and maybe even run into living legend Madonna.

Bryski says she has been trying to be a professional musician forever. "I remember being five years old, I wrote a song and sang it acappella in front of my whole school in a talent show. When you're five you're fearless. You're just la lala la la..." she says in a sing-song lilt.

Bryski was just seven years old watching Laverne and Shirley with her grandma when the truth of her talent came to light for the first time. "I was sitting on the floor singing the theme song at the top of my lungs, vibrato, hitting all the high notes, and my grandma looks at my mom and says 'you know she can kinda sing'. I remember hearing her say it and kinda going hee hee hee, because in the back of my mind at that point I KNEW I could sing. I started telling my mom I was interested in music. I wanted Shawn Cassidy records. In the mountains we didn't have good radio stations so I was always trying to get my relatives to send me records. When I was eight my mom bought me a really old funky piano upright, nasty, paint chipping off it of it kind of thing. I started taking piano lessons and it was like--insert cool blast off sound here-- I was off and running!"

She began performing professionally when she was 14 and says that until she was 25 she was "in and out of a gazillion cover bands. "I was playing in bars and my mom had to write me a note to play. When mom got mad music was always the first thing she took away. "My stereo and my curling iron. She sent me to school with straight hair and that was bad in the 80's!

At first glance one would not think there could be much crossover in her two jobs. Bryski deftly explains the beauty of the crossover in her double life. "It totally works. Being a musician in Sacramento and working for a non-profit, I know a lot of people
and it's helped me in my job at Sierrra. I know radio station people who are interested in helping charities." Bryski has worked hard to build a good rapport with people and on occasion they may even do favors for each other. "Promoting your band is a lot like promoting anything. There is product involved, design, website. A lof of it goes hand in hand".

She admits that it's a lot to handle. "I get really tired because I have this double life. I get here at 7:30 am and work until 4:30 pm most nights, then I go to Skips and teach (vocals) from 5-8 and and then some nights I have band practice or shows. I teach on weekends too, then have shows at night."

For the rocking Larisa Bryski one thing is crystal clear. 'I will never stop playing music whether it with my band or solo, not necessarily performing but writing and teaching." "It's all important. The music is important, the job is important. But if I had to choose, I would always choose the music, it's just in me."

Larisa Bryski, By Day

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Larisa Bryski leads a double life.
By day: Public relations hub for Sierra Adoption Center.
By night: Singer songwriter with her group, The Larisa Bryski Band, who recently landed a recording contract with an upstart label, DMI.
But somewhere between am and pm these two seemingly disparate aspects to her life seem to cross over effortlessly.

"I have two different lives. The music part of it is just something that has always been in me, and the passion for the job I have is something that's come since I've been in the non-profit world as an adult going into a career, something that pays the bills."

But clearly it's really not just about paying the bills. She has a genuine passion for philanthropy and seems to have found a niche that feeds her soul almost as well as the music does. Bryski says that after working at Sierra Adoption Center for awhile she fell in love with the mission. "I'm happy with what I'm doing. I'm the only person who does PR for the angency. I aspire to do more with my job, create more buzz for the agency, get more recognition, place more children. I see myself being happy here for a long time, unless I get the big record deal." A smile spreads across her face and she lets out a delighted laugh. "What's cool about when I first got hired here, one of the women in administration knew who I was because she had heard my name on the radio or something and she says, 'Well, you're a musician. What happens if you get rich and famous? Are you just gonna leave? That was part of my interview and it was this big panel and she was one of them. I said Well, probably but I would donate a big chunk of money to the agency!" I would too, they all know that that's who I am but they also know that while I'm here I make a very conscious effort to separate the two. I dress like this (see attractive conservative outfit photo) and I really try not to conduct band business while I'm at work. There's a mutual respect. They know things might happen, I hope things happen, but if they don't that's ok too."

Bryski says that one cool correlation between working for a charity and doing music is that she can sometimes perform for charity, and not just for Sierra. "I'm really into philanthropy anyway, animal issues, children issues, breast cancer, girl scouts (she used to be one). It enables me to do something other than just write a check."

Although she gets an emotional charge from both sides of her life she says the emotional end is quite different for each. "When I'm interviewing a family for the newsletter we produce I cry a lot. Because the kids we place most of the time come from situations of neglect from their birth family and then they are saved by these people who come forward to adopt them and take them into their homes forever. It's crazy, just the most amazing thing so many children who need families and have families that adopt them. You ask them 'is there any diference between having a biological child and having an adopted child and they say no, no difference. I love this child just as much.' It's awesome when that happens."

But from the music side of things when somebody comes up to me and says I love your song... when I write a song that really connects with someobody... that's like woah, I made something that somebody else relates to and made them emotional and that makes me emotional.

Larisa Bryski, First Impressions

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

It's the corporate attire that takes you by surprise because it's a far cry from the sexier fare of this singer who belts out her original songs in clubs all over town on a very regular basis. But here we are at the offices of Sierra Adoption Center where Larisa Bryski works, standing in the child-friendly hallway, walls covered in murals. Bryski's public relations efforts for Sierra Adoption Center helps children who need warm and loving homes find them.