New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Angie Keilhauer�s story starts all the way in San Salvador, El Salvador, where she was born. Having moved to Marietta, GA with her family when she was 11 years old due to national unrest, she now calls the United States home. She started playing anywhere and everywhere that would let her after being gifted her first guitar in high school. Her mom�s obsession with
Dolly Parton records fueled Keilhauer�s own obsession with country music.
Fast-forward to her college days, and Keilhauer began studying Biology while working full-time as a Ford Mustang parts dealer. Her passion for cars inspired her to create a YouTube channel dedicated to DIY car repairs, but she quit both school and her job at the end of her second year to sing on a cruise ship. Working for Carnival Cruise lines changed her life, allowing herself to be labelled as a professional musician and make lifelong connections all across the globe.
She describes the moment of epiphany that convinced her to do music full time as a commute to work at 5:00 in the morning, where she would have given anything to stay asleep for five more minutes. �In that 20 minute drive I went from being in the worst kind of mood, to catching myself singing along with the radio and thumping the steering wheel along with the kick drum to one of my favorite
Blake Shelton songs,� Keilhauer says. �I remember thinking this is what music is supposed to do.�
In March of 2016, she auditioned for Season 10 of The Voice. From the three chairs that turned around in interest, she chose
Blake Shelton as her coach and remained in the competition all the way until the knockout rounds. In her audition, Shelton said, �There is something very undisciplined about the way you perform...you are wild!� At first this sounded strange to her, but Keilhauer soon fell in love with the description and let it guide her into the wild, unexpected spaces spanning her music career.
In three years, she went from working eight hours a day, taking apart junk cars in the blazing heat and selling her guitar to pay rent; to playing music in the Caribbean six days a week for months at a time; to playing multi-week tours in dive bars across the southern United States; to finding herself on one of the most famous stages on U.S. television. Now she�s touring
Europe and Central America, while selling out mid-size venues up and down the east coast of the United States.
For every moment where she wanted to give up, there was a moment waiting to inspire her to keep going. She says, �I�m not successful because I didn�t fail. I�m successful because I failed, and it taught me how to find the strength to keep going.� Keilhauer�s belief that the hardest and most difficult parts of our lives have the potential to becoming the most inspiring is something that she strives to put in her music, and she hopes that those who listen can find that same motivation in their own lives.
She released her very first full-band project shortly after finishing The Voice. The seven-track EP, Wild, was entirely funded by two straight years of nonstop touring across the country. Her life savings went into the production of the EP, and it all paid off; within two hours, it reached #5 on the singer-songwriter charts and #1 on the same chart in El Salvador.
The life behind Keilhauer�s music is driven by the same thirst for adventure that convinced her to quit everything and play on a cruise ship, audition for The Voice, and tour the country for a living. �I feel like some of the greatest and most incredible parts of our lives tend to happen in these spaces of the unplanned and unexpected,� Keilhauer says, and these spaces allow her to be Wild.
