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By KRYS GRANDMOND
Staff Writer

When your best friend in fourth grade decides to be a singer, you think that's cool. When you join choir in seventh grade, you don't think anything of it. But when someone you know hands you their demo CD, it can be mind-blowing.

I've known since I was very young that my life was never going to be "normal". I never wanted an office career, filing papers or sitting at a desk. I never wanted to be a doctor, a nurse, a dentist, a police officer or any other "normal" career. My goals were always much higher.

I dreamed of the impossible. Meeting performers of the music world and the big screen, hanging out and partying with the stars, working with them, and just generally living their lifestyle. But I wanted all of this without the fame and limelight that seemed to be such a big part of their lives.

Well, the impossible started becoming possible for me when I was only 16 years old.

After seeing some tribute bands in 1999, I was hooked. I attended more and more shows, seeing all the different talented acts that came to town. Being only 16 years old, I had no way to go to the bigger cities where, it seemed, more and more tribute bands were performing. I spent more time online than ever before, researching new talent and getting in touch with other fans across the world.

It was then that I met Krista Hall.

The fateful day when our paths crossed, both of our lives changed forever. Turned out, I wasn't the only one with dreams of a life in the entertainment industry. We were half a country apart and had never met, but we were not discouraged. We stayed in contact daily and came up with an online promotion company, Into Existence, which focused on tribute acts and unknown talent. We were sure that this was our ticket out of our small towns and "normal" lives.

Two years after we first started talking, Krista got on a plane and left her home behind.

Granted, it was only for two weeks over March break. But it was a step towards our mutual goal, and after being here, it wasn't long before she was back. This time for good.

She came for school in Toronto, a step we were both supposed to take, but financial difficulty and a sudden desire to follow a different path left me at home in St. Catharines. We still kept the company and I travelled to Toronto, Wonderland mostly, to stay in touch with some tribute bands that we were promoting.

We met hundreds of performers, promoted some, and became close friends with many of them. I watched their shows go downhill and some of them cancelled completely. We pushed harder and narrowed our focus to a single tribute band with whom we had become particularily close. We were there while they travelled the world and performed for new audiences in Panama, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, among others, and then finally, China.

It was shortly after that point that I took a step back and took a breath in frustration. The group was falling again and it seemed that there was nothing more we could do. I began to feel like I had let them down, somehow, we, our company, had failed. A close friend told me to look at the bigger picture, and I realised that whether we had a direct effect or not, when Into Existence Promotions stepped into the lives of Backstreet's Back, they gained exposure, became the #1 tribute to the Backstreet Boys in the entire world, and played more shows than anybody could have imagined for a tribute band.

It may have been our promotions, it may have been that we were just THERE and helped them become better people, or it may have been a coincidence. But for whatever reason, their lives had changed. As had ours.

When Backstreet's Back dismembered, we put Into Existence on the back burner and focused on our education. Something we had been missing all along. I enrolled in Niagara College's Journalism program in hopes to become a music journalist. In the year that I was there, I learned everything I could possibly know about the journalist's career, life and business. I interviewed some stars, some new talent, and found myself at home.

It was only after I found out the only place for me after graduation was either back in school or at a small-time paper for the first few years that I decided I'd take what I'd learned and leave.

I left with some great memories, amazing friends and a new-found confidence that comes with meeting and chilling with big-name performers.

Now I've taken that knowledge and with the help of Krista again, have decided to start something new. After watching my tribute friends grow up and create their own names, I'm focusing a lot on their solo careers, as well as some other unsigned talent that I come across along the way.

It's one thing to be friends with a tribute performer and experience, even on a small scale, the lifestyle of a musician. It's something completely different when you hear a friend's song on the radio and can say "I knew that person when they were performing Backstreet Boys songs at Wonderland."

Life has a funny way of making things work out. But it always does just that.

It works out.