Executive Editor

A 16-year-old Battle Creek singer/songwriter, recording artist Ada LeAnn, has been nominated to receive a Josie Music Award in the young vocalist category when the show is held Sept. 18 in Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

The 7th Annual Josie Music Awards red-carpet event will be filmed for television in the Country Tonight Theatre.

Billed as “the largest independent industry award show” and as the “event of the year” for indies, Ada, the daughter of Mark Peevers and Jennifer Garner, said she does not know how she was nominated.

“I was so shocked to find out that I was nominated to get the award,” said Ada, a junior at Lakeview High School who most recently appeared on stage at the Field of Flight Air Show and Balloon Festival and at 2021 Leilapalooza. “I got this letter in the mail. They were like ‘Congratulations, you have a nomination for 2021’ and I was like, ‘Oh, what is this?’ I didn’t know how big of a deal it was.”

Since its inception in 2015, the Josie has become an covetered award by independent artists in the music industry, according to its website, joseimusicawards.com.

“Ada is starting to gain some attention that could bring some excitement to her community and home town of Battle Creek,” said Peevers, who by day is a Denso manager and in his free time, serves as CEO of Ada Music, LLC.

Ada, who grew up in Battle Creek, is a former member of LMS Masque (founded by Lakeview Middle School office staffer, Deanna Flora) having appeared in the musicals, Willy Wonka and later as the mother of Buddy in “Elf.”

She also first joined the Lakeview High School show choir, the Spartanaires as a freshman and is making her return to that choir this 2021-2022 school year, she said.

She currently is in the second year of her artist development contract with Carter Frodge who is a Nashville based songwriter signed with Fairtrade Music Publishing. 

Frodge has had multiple songs chart on national Christian radio and Billboard, according to Peevers, and Ada goes to his studio every couple of months to work on EP development and recording.

“He is helping me become the singer, songwriter and artist I want to become,” said Ada. “I write songs that are personal but also relatable to many.”

In Nov. 2020, she released her first EP (extended play,) “Young Love” on Apple Music, iTunes and Spotify and she is currently about to wrap her second EP, tentatively called “Bittersweet,” she said.

She is one of 13 artists to be nominated for the Josie in the “Young Adult (13-17) Category (Artist/Vocalist of the Year) Female.

Ada has in recent years switched from country music to indie pop and “ballads, ballads, ballads,” she said, since going on her daily writing sprees.

Some days, she said, she writes more than one song.

Already, she’s making money from her first EP, which contains six originals and five covers, earning royalties with every stream and download.

“Nobody buys really CDs or albums anymore, unless you’re into the old vinyl,” said Peevers, who with his own musical pursuits developed many of the contacts who are helping Ada’s career today. “Mostly everyone just streams their music. For whatever reason, Indonesia just loves her and they stream her about 10,000 times a day.”

“Someone to Somebody”, her original, is in second place for her streams so I think that’s close to 300,000 to 400,000 streams overall since November.

“Her cover, her real big one is her cover of ‘10,000 Hours’ by Dan and Shay,” said Peevers. “That one is 500,000 or 600,000 with 50,000 on Spotify, the rest on Sound Cloud, TikTok. On Tik-Tok, people have picked up that she made and recorded it and people have used it for well over 500,000 to 600,000 different videos.”

Because Ada owns 100 percent of her masters, anytime those songs play, she gets 100 percent of the royalties.

“I’ve always said this,” said Ada, “I think the Internet is such a gift right now. It is such a great way to get your name out there and heard. I think it’s been like probably one of the best things for musicians or people with talent in general to get their name out there.”

Ada, who first realized she could overcome her stage fright after competing in and winning the Caroling in the Creek talent showcase in December of 2018 and then the Delton Idol in 2019, has also twice auditioned for “The Voice” NBC television series - once last year and again this year.

The first time, she not onlymade it through the first round, she was called back for a second audition the next day.

“I used to love watching The Voice. I would picture myself there and same thing with American Idol,” she said. “I always loved that show.”

After the grueling process to audition, Ada said she was told that although they loved her voice, it didn’t “fit” what that season was to be about and she was encouraged to try again the following season.

Then, said Peevers, they called her and invited her to go back and audition earlier this year.

Again, she didn’t make the cut.

“They think that she is an amazing talent and has a lot of potential and a lot of skill,” said Peevers. “I think there is a lot of trying to tell a story on the TV show and she didn’t quite meet what they were looking for, the story they were trying to tell on that season.”

Ada has been singing since she was around nine years old when she found that she enjoyed listening to and singing along with Adele on the radio.

“I loved Adele, I was obsessed with her,” said Ada. “She was a total idol of mine for a long time and I would just sing behind closed doors, in the shower and stuff and my parents just wanted to hear me actually sing and not so hidden like that but I wouldn’t, I never wanted to come out because I was so shy. I had awful stage fright.”

Ada was self conscious, worried she’d make a mistake and that she’d receive judgment or criticism, she said.

In fact, when she agreed to follow her parents’ advice to get involved with music related activities at school, she adutioned for a singing part in Willy Wonka.

“We had like this singing tryouts and I was singing and I got a call back and they were like, ‘we want you to come back and sing’ and I was like, ‘No,’ and I just didn’t go back because I was so terrified of it, (singing on stage),” recalled Ada, “so I was like, ‘if I get a big role, I’m going to go into a show and I’m not going to want to do it’ so I didn’t even go to the callback.”

 Instead, she appeared in that musical as an Oompa Loompa.

That was in sixth grade.

After a year of singing on her Facebook page and slowly earning some confidence, she returned to LMS Masque to this time audition for a singing role in Elf.

“It was a pretty big role in the show and I had a lot of singing and acting parts,” said Ada, who no longer pursues theatre. “It was my first big role in anything. And, I was still a little nervous because it was in front of my peers which still makes me a lot more nervous. I would say it’s still harder to sing in front of my peers than people I don’t even know.”

After those stage appearances, combined with her talent show wins, Ada came out of her shell.

Aside from performing at Leilapalooza in 2019, she also sang at the Kalamazoo New Year’s Eve Fest, which, combined with her auditions at The Voice, have boosted her confidence in her abilities.

In fact, she has had no formal vocal instruction other than three months with a Kalamazoo voice coach at Tiny Voice Box via the Kalamazoo Music School, said Peevers.

“They said, ‘you’ve got all the skills, all I can teach you is good vocal health,’” said Peevers. “She wanted to make sure she started playing instruments so she had a couple months of guitar. She’s really not had any lessons on piano.”

Now, Ada is more focused on her career goals than anything else, she said.

“Right now, I’m really into songwriting,” said Ada. “My goals have more developed into, ‘I want to write really amazing songs.’”

She said the ongoing pandemic has played on a role in that endeavor.

“I used to not write a lot of my own original music but since the pandemic hit, every day, I’m writing,” she said. “I think everyone can relate to feeling lonely in the pandemic. I was bored, I was exhausted, like, I just was not motivated to do much and I had so much free time that I was like, ‘I’m just going to start making music in my room’ so I had all these feelings anyways because I was just feeling alone and we couldn’t go out.”

She was lonely, she said, because she couldn’t see her friends, and now, they’re all most estranged from one another.

“It was a really hard period and I was like, ‘I’m going to milk all of these feelings right now and I’m going to write a bunch of music off it’,” said Ada. “And, I wrote, like, a hundred-plus songs that year, so.”

Because not all of her songs will make it onto “Bittersweet” when it releases this November, Ada and Peevers have decided to put them to good use independently by recording an acoustic album at home with a targeted release date of Oct. 1.

That album will be released on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon, she said.

Those are short term goals, she said.

Long term, she wants to go all in on the music business.

“This is my whole life. It has so struck me and sometimes, it’s hard to even talk about it,” said Ada, who admits that she sometimes has to field suggestions from other about her future. “I want to make this a full passion for me and I want to be fully committed to it.

“So, when I tell people,” she continued, “when they ask, ‘Where are you going to go to college? What are you going to do when you get older?’ and I’m always like, ‘Here we go.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t really want to go to college, I want to pursue this fully, I want to move to Nashville after high school.’” 

For Ada, focusing on a “back up plan” would leave her only partly committed to her music making dreams.

“If I’m not committed to it and I start thinking of all these other devised plans,” she said, “I’m not going to be fully committed to it, I’m going to be committed to making sure I have something to fall on. And, that never got anybody big by coming up with other things to do.”

For now, Ada is returning to her classes at Lakeview High School, her involvement in Spartainaires and other extra curricular activities and looking forward to going to prom her senior year.

It just so happens, 2021 marks 20 years since Lakeview High School graduated another singer/songwriter and guitarist who recorded two albums each for Reprise Records and Warner Brothers Records.

Ada said she often gets asked about country music star Frankie Ballard, and was even once offered a chance to perform with him, though it did not come to fruition.

“People ask me about that all the time,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, you’re kind of like Frankie Ballard’. I’m like, ‘Thanks.’”

After school hours, she’s working on her album and planning her September trip to the Josie Awards and then to the music studio in Nashville to finish her second EP which she is already convinced is better than her first, she said.

As if that weren’t enough, she’s also been asked to sing online for a California-based, indoor football team that wants to support independent artists.

“If they love it, they’re going to fly me out next year to California, all expenses paid and let me open for them in real life,” said Ada.

Look for her, also, at the Kalamazoo New Year’s Eve Fest, she said.

Her family, which includes three siblings, remains “super supportive”, she said.

“They come to all my shows, cheer for me,” she said, “and they’re really awesome.”