Hi guys! So, usually it’s Jeremy who is posting but tonight I decided I should post and talk a little bit about myself, especially as we’ve made some pretty big changes in our band lately. More on those later…

Anyway, I had wanted to be in a band for a long time, since I was a teenage and got my first guitar (which I still have nearly 10 years later). I would read so many tabs and attempted to learn all the chords, but unfortunately I couldn’t make any sense out of it and set the guitar down for good. Years later, I ended up going to college and getting my degree in Biology with expectations of going to medical school. That didn’t work out for me so I ended up going to graduate school for Forensic Biochemistry.

Long story short, which I’ll post more about as time goes on, I ended up meeting the wrong guy. I was about to move away to attend school and missed the initial red flag: he made the decision that he was moving with me…without me asking. Being dumb in the “puppy-love” phase, I gleefully accepted this and out he went with me. I just want to take a moment to say that if you are newly dating someone and if anything feels uncomfortable, even in the slightest, you have every right to say no and not “just go with it”.

On to grad school, I was severely unprepared for what this level of school held. I eventually got my bearings and still did really well in my classes. What didn’t go quite as well was my research. I loved what I did, super interesting work, but I didn’t really get along well with my supervisor. Still to this day I have no idea why she didn’t like me but it’s in the past. What made matters worse is that my boyfriend at the time became extremely abusive. Not only was I dealing with the yelling of my supervisor, but I would come home (if my boyfriend remembered to pick me up as he insisted he always needed my car) and when even the slightest inconvenience would come up, my boyfriend would beat me until I could barely move and was covered in bruises. It’s sad when you are happy that your work uniform is a lab coat and can cover the huge bruises.

Eventually I graduated with my Masters, by some miracle, but ended up jobless for months. The final straw that eventually led me to Tampa was when my boyfriend dumped me but insisted I give him my car keys. When I said no, he trapped me in the bed room and shoved me down. I landed on my knee and my ACL partially snapped. I gave him the keys to prevent further beatings and off he went to Daytona Beach to move in with his new girlfriend. With the help of some roommates, I was able to get my car back, packed up my car with everything important that would fit (mostly Yoshi, my dog, and my bass guitar I bought a year before but never learned to play) and moved in with my sister.

I did go to the police and filed charges and spent the next year and a half in the court system, therapy, everything. Again, another story I’ll post more on later. So, moving to Tampa, I joined a band as a singer on a whim. I was getting really interested in writing songs again and felt like it was more therapeutic than my therapy sessions were. Though this, I met some really cool people and even ended up meeting my now boyfriend and band vocalist/guitarist, Jeremy. We ended up moving in a different direction with the original band, and in January 2015, Jeremy started teaching me how to play bass and we began our now project The Time Framed. The rest is history!

Now you know a little more about me, the quiet bass player. I’m loving playing bass, it feels like it’s an extra appendage at this point. I’m also looking forward to restarting my education career. I’ve been studying again to retake the MCAT and reapply to medical school. I will be posting more stories of my life, especially about the abuse and going through the court systems, as I feel this is a really important topic to more openly discuss and how music changed my life for the better and really helped me past this time in my life.

Thanks for listening!

Britt