"I am not looking at going to college right now. I am simply enjoying traveling right now...walking around the cities I tour without having to worry about homework," said 19-year-old Christian singer, Rachael Lampa.
Touring around with her older brother and manager, Ryan Lampa, Lampa in more than one way has come so far from the young 14-year-old who got up on stage at a Christian music seminar and sang a Whitney Houston song.
"I got a record deal," she said, laughing. "I grew up in a Christian family but we didn't listen to Christian music much. I grew up listening to Stevie Wonder. I have always liked Stevie Wonder and have to get my everyday fix. It was weird not growing up with Christian music because people would ask me, "Don't you know dc talk and I didn't," Lampa said.
Reared by a father who was Filipino and a mother who was Hungarian-Irish, Lampa grew up not really knowing about racism either.
"I didn't know what it was since I live in a mixed family and have friends of color. People talk about racism but I never really saw it as a problem," she said.
She instead grew up versed in knowing about the traditional Filipino meal on Lo Mein at Thanksgiving. And though she may have been naive to names of other Christian artists, it saved her from developing a certain "attitude" about Christian music.
"I am so thankful I didn't grow up listening to Christian music...thankful I am not a crazy, weird obsessed fan...gushing all over (other artists)," Lampa said.
It also helped Lampa develop her own style, a style that emerges more on her fourth album, Rachael Lampa, released this past summer.
"This is different for me writing my own songs. I have been learning to write different styles of songs and it has been a learning experience just writing so much. I have always been trying to change things up and I have really liked that funk, rock n' roll thing...that seems to work well for me," she said.
Now, five years after her first stage debut, Lampa ponders the past briefly.
"I think it is pretty awesome that I have gotten this far. I never would have guessed that I would be traveling, not going to school. This is my everyday life and I am doing what I love," she said. But her past cannot dictate where her uncharted future may lie. "I have started work writing on a new album although it's not official...and this new record may have some funk, soul and rock n' roll on it," she said.
But for now, Lampa isn't looking too far into the future. She is content to be in the present - sharing her faith in God.
"I think about a song when I am onstage and why I wrote a particular song..what I was going though in my life at that time... feeling all those experiences and my faith...going though those times in my life. I wrote the last song, "Room for Me" (on Rachael Lampa). The (song) lyrics were written after 9/11 along with everyone who was writing about 9/11. The song is about how much disaster and tragedy there is in the world and how God gets us through it."
