Story Last modified at 1:27 p.m. on Thursday, January 5, 2006
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"My demo CD doesn't even have my own music. I am just singing other people's songs, but I guess, from what my brother said, the guys in his company really love it," Temple said. "The whole thing is really pretty flattering. I mean, I've got all these gorgeous military guys listening to me."
Pretty heady stuff for a young woman who at the tender age of 16 has already made a name for herself on the local music scene and intends to pursue a career in music once she completes high school.
During last summer's Bear Paw Festival, she was awarded "Best Diva" in the karaoke contest. A year ago when Wayne's Texas BBQ in Anchorage was running its weekly singing contest, she not only won, but was invited back as a weekly hostess singing in between competitors.
From there, she decided to make a demo CD.
But with limited funds, Temple needed to take a creative approach.
Last March, while visiting her grandparents in Brownsville, Texas, Temple heard a mobile recording studio was going to be at one of the local big box retailers as part of a product promotion.
Anybody could try to record a song for free as long as they first performed on the stage in the parking lot.
Why not, Temple thought?
"We went down there and there was nobody there," she said. "So, I just went ahead and recorded a song and thought, 'hey, wow, this is awesome.' "
Apparently, the folks running the full-fledged mobile recording studio thought so too because they bent the rules just a bit for Temple by allowing her to perform and record another nine songs in between other brave souls who came by that afternoon.
"I think I was there for about five hours for the first day, just singing on the mobile stage and then heading into the recording studio," Temple said. "Then, the next day, I was there from like 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and they just kept fitting me in."
Talk about a rush, Temple said.
That's when she figured out being on the stage was most definitely what she wanted to do.
Temple had taken voice lessons for years, but had only learned the formalities of stage vocal presentation. She said there's a whole lot more to entertaining a crowd than just making sure your voice is on pitch.
Her experience in Brownsville gave her a first and enduring taste for stage presence, she said.
"I got used to being able to move around on the stage and really getting into it with the crowd," she said.
Her grandparents were getting into her performances as well and have promised they will accompany her to an "American Idol" audition or to Nashville, Tenn.
There isn't much potential for a career in country music here in Alaska, Temple said. She knows she'll have to leave The Last Frontier to get started.
That's why for now, she is putting her nose to the grindstone trying to finish up her schoolwork. Temple is a home school student.
"My music is somewhat on standstill right now," she said.
Well, except with the guys in the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, Gulf Company stationed out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., who completed a tour of Iraq earlier this summer and are now deployed to Japan.
It all started after Temple returned home from Texas with her demo CD in hand.
She wanted her big brother, Bryce, a Marine Corps radio operator, to hear her sing.
She thought it might help cheer him during those unavoidable down times that accompany being stationed in the desert.
What she didn't expect was the enormous demand for her voice that came after her brother piped the CD through his platoon.
"I got a package from my family and it was in a box marked 'Alisha's CD,' " recalled Bryce via an e-mail sent from Japan last week. "I wasn't sure exactly what it was, so I put it in the CD player and within moments I had the entire platoon in our small makeshift home mesmerized by my sister's voice."
Within a week, nearly the entire company heard his little sister's CD and were requesting copies.
Bryce got busy burning copies for the guys.
His then roomie, Lance Cpl. Cole Vick, got the first copy. No selling involved, just a free copy of his younger sister singing popular country western music.
Oh, and Bryce took extra care to remind the guys that his little sister was at that time only 15 years old.
"Most of them wanted to meet her, of course, and maybe be her boyfriend," Bryce said. "That's when her age came out."
Despite being a minor, Alisha was invited to attend the annual Marine Corps Ball held in Las Vegas over the Halloween weekend.
There she met many of her adoring fans.
"When we headed back from Iraq, you could still hear her CD being played throughout the barracks at night putting Marines peacefully to sleep," said Bryce.
For Alisha, that's the ultimate compliment.
"The greatest thing about all of this is that while they were on deployment in Iraq and coming back, the CD made them happy, it provided some inspiration for them," Temple said. "As long as it put a smile on their faces, it was worth it."
Reach the reporter at news@alaskastar.com.
This article published in The Alaska Star on Thursday, January 5, 2006.
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