From acting to albums: Meredith Parks on returning to music with Trying To Find My Way

After years of navigating the world of acting, Meredith Parks has released her debut album, Trying To Find My Way, produced by recording legend Bill Szymczyk, in collaboration with independent music company Head in the Clouds Music, founded by Szymczyk’s son, Michael Szymczyk, and Meredith’s childhood friend, Evan Mathews. Here, the four of them discuss how AUDIX mics have changed their approach to miking, and Parks reflects on finding her way back to music.

Meredith, your musical career took a significant detour. Can you talk about your creative journey into acting?

Meredith Parks: I grew up singing in church; my love for the stage began at four years old. It wasn’t until my college years that I started writing songs. I went to UNC Chapel Hill and started out as a vocal performance major, but I hated music theory and transferred to the drama department, and loved it. 

From there, I auditioned for local television and film productions. Things were picking up in North Carolina and Atlanta, and I fell into acting opportunities. 

When I moved to L.A. in 2013, acting was where my focus was, but I wouldn’t say acting was a “detour” from my musical journey. I love it and still act. But here’s the thing, in acting you're playing a character and saying other people's words, but on my musical journey it took a while for me to not just find my voice but to also trust in my voice and hone in on what I wanted to say as an artist. Then I needed to find the courage to put my original ideas out there.

Do you find anything helpful about having both experiences in your career?

Meredith Parks: Absolutely! The two blend into each other. I think any time you're doing any type of creative pursuit and trying new things, they synergise. I've done that in so many different ways that I'm more assured and determined. I'm not frightened to be on stage when I'm performing. 

In addition, we're now working on several songs that aren't from my first-person perspective, so it's fun to get into the voice of a different character. The acting has definitely helped the music along the way.

What called you to focus on your music?

Meredith Parks: Music is something that I've always wanted to do. I don't think there was ever a moment when I didn't want to perform music, but, for this particular project, the time was right and all of the pieces finally fell into place.

How did Trying To Find My Way come together?

Meredith Parks: Trying To Find My Way is 15 songs that chronicle my personal journey, my ups and downs through my creative career and personal life, moving from North Carolina to California and back again. They’re my diary entries, so to speak. 

The seeds for many of the songs began as early as 2014 and were sitting as voice memos on my phone for a decade. I brought them into the studio, and we went from there. I wouldn’t call it a concept album, but it does tell a story about trying to find your way in life.

Michael Szymczyk: “Finding your way in life” is a larger metaphor, something that everyone can understand and relate to, but it also has layers that apply to Meredith as an individual and us as a smaller team. From finding our way creatively to trying to find our way in a music landscape that is constantly shifting faster than we all feel we can sometimes keep up with. 

Everybody has access to being creative, making and releasing their art, but how do you sustain that? How do you get it out in the right way? How do you make a career of it? So, Trying to Find My Way can be taken at multitudes of levels.

Meredith Parks: It even applies to trying to find my way in simply making music. It always seemed harder to make music than to be in the acting world. For acting, I knew the steps to follow. Whereas with music, it wasn't that clear to me. 

The musician's path is not defined anymore. Finding collaborators that you trust is hard. Even if you’ve known each other for a long time, actually working together is a whole different thing. But we were able to develop that trust and make this what it is now.

When did you discover AUDIX mics?

Bill Szymczyk: My awareness of AUDIX started about 15 years ago, when one of my longtime session drummers, Joe Vitale, sent me a few mics, the i5 and original D6, suggesting I should try them out. I was impressed.

Michael Szymczyk: When I was younger and started miking my drums for recording and live performances, I was taught to mic a drum kit a certain way with certain microphones. I thought it would never change, and it couldn’t get any better. 

Then I tried some AUDIX mics. First on the kick, then the snare, then the toms, and I realized that drums CAN sound better. Then, in the post-pandemic era, as we started to get rolling on helping musicians like Meredith, AUDIX reached out and asked how they could help, and they assisted us in sourcing the right products for our needs. We ended up using an array of AUDIX microphones on her record.

Bill Szymczyk: At this point, we mic everything with AUDIX. The SCX25A lollipops are a good example. We set up drums in our library, and the piano sits right across from the kit. During the recording of Meredith's album, I was using the lollipops as overheads on the drums, and I loved them for their crispness. We needed a piano overdub, and I thought, “Let’s turn them around and stick them in the piano to see what happens.” I was stunned at the sound we captured.

Michael Szymczyk: After experimenting with the SCX25 overheads on the piano, we took that approach for the whole record. We decided to use it as a hi-hat mic for things that were a bit more dynamically soft, and then we used it on a crazy guitar part. Then I had to capture live strings in my apartment in L.A., and I used them paired with the A231. 

It was fun figuring out all the uses we could find for the SCX25A; it was so flexible. We also used the PDX720 a lot. It's on vocals. It's on the JC120 guitar amp. I used it to mic a cello. Every mic from AUDIX has two or three prominent uses on the record, and that’s a testament to their versatility. Don’t get me wrong, we tried mics from other brands that we had in our locker, we were pretty scientific about it, but time and time again, we kept returning to AUDIX because they just sounded better.

Bill Szymczyk: I’ve had a series of go-to microphones that I’ve used for an endless amount of time…some 30+ years. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but for the first time, I’ve rethought my entire approach to miking, and it’s all thanks to AUDIX. I'm totally happy.

Michael Szymczyk: We filmed a promo piece for the record, completely live in the studio, and we were able to mic Meredith’s vocals with the PDX720, with guitar cabs, pianos and cello all performing around her, and it sounded great. In fact, we used our entire set of AUDIX studio mics, all 15, on every instrument for this live recording. 

It didn’t matter if it was a song like Cowboys, which is absolutely screaming with wailing guitar, or a song like Feel Alive, where it's super stripped down and mellow with strings and piano; we were able to use the same AUDIX mics for the entire thing. We’re not just planning on using AUDIX in the studio. 

We’re in the process of testing out their OMX mic for some live festival performances that Meredith has coming up.

Do you have a favourite AUDIX Microphone?

Meredith Parks: When we use the PDX 720, it's just beautiful. Give me that mic on everything I sing, every day. I love it. I'd like to take it home, but they won't let me. [laughs]

What advice do you have for independent artists trying to find their way?

Meredith Parks: It's so cliché, but really, just believe in yourself. If you have the desire to write, sing, act, or anything, just go for it. Put yourself out there and believe in yourself.

Michael Szymczyk: You also need to absolutely grind on it until you feel like it's worthy of putting out to the people that you're trying to reach. There are eight billion people in the world, which means there's a sustainable audience for everybody. Now go find your way to your audience.

Evan Mathews: A personal anecdote that ties into this record is “know when to let go.” Before I moved to L.A., I wrote songs that I knew would never see the light of day. One of the tracks that ended up on the record was something I’d written when I was 20 years old. 

I believed in it and had been holding on to it for all that time, but somewhere deep inside, I knew it wasn't for me. In finally letting it go and having Meredith do it some 15 odd years later, I was relieved that it had finally found its place.