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In 2007, Kelly Domino made a change. A big one. Armed only with her voice and a gift for melody, she swapped her career as an engineer and computer scientist and became a singer/songwriter. Now, with one album under her belt and another on the way, she’s just beginning to realize what it all means.
“The theme of my entire first album is about holding onto your dreams,” she says. “I can now say, as of Nov. 21 – the day my first CD was released – if I end up going back to computer work, I have the satisfaction of knowing I gave it my best shot.”
Perhaps Domino says it best in the title track of her album “Hold On To Your Dreams,” a collection of breezy rock and blues-influenced pop.
Imagine the future and you’re just about to die. Is there a regret about a dream you didn’t even try?
“I’ve been writing songs as a hobby since I was 5,” Domino says. “But my parents really dissuaded the music end, telling me there was no future in music and that I should go into engineering. So I did. But in 2007, my husband’s business was taking off. So I asked him if we could swap dreams for a while, and I quit my job.”
Domino found inspiration for the change in two unusual places: “American Idol” and the Jack Nicholson-Morgan Freeman film “The Bucket List.”
“That movie gave me a nagging feeling,” she says. “I really started to wonder if I could do something with my songwriting. At the same time, ‘American Idol’ had a songwriting contest, so I submitted three songs just to see what would happen.”
She performed her songs for co-workers and was encouraged (and a little surprised) by their reaction, she says.
“Basically, they asked me, ‘If you can write songs like this, what are you doing working in computers?’ It made me think.”
Currently, Domino is gathering momentum, recording a new album and looking for a band to support her on tour next year. Since she started recording, Domino has written 57 songs.
“I was afraid the ideas would dry up,” she says. “But it’s been the opposite. I have more ideas flying at me than I can possibly finish.”
Nearly half of the songs on “Hold On To Your Dreams” were written during the 1980s, before Domino met her husband-to-be. So songs such as “When I Met You” (Domino’s wedding vows set to music) are countered by songs with titles such as “Was She Good” and “Two-Faced Lover.”
“The songs are inspired by personal experience, but not necessarily recent experience,” she says. “Several songs are about infidelity, based on boyfriends I had in the late ’80s. My husband hates that. But even on the more negative songs, I still manage to look at it from an angle of catharsis.
“That’s what I like to do with my music, inspire people and give them good feelings, even when they’ve gone through negative situations.”
edowns@jg.net
