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Avril Lavigne should be looking over her shoulder with chicks like Ryan Joy around. The Tampa-based minidiva manifested a love for show biz at age 10, taking up voice lessons in the hope of someday becoming a part of the cultural landscape like her childhood heroes Kiss, Mötley Crüe, and — what, is this a typo here? — Barbra Streisand.
Hard work led to a stint as a dancer and cohost of Club TV, a now-defunct TRL-like local show based in Central Florida. A major-label rep happened to catch an episode and encouraged Joy to keep banging away with her vastly powerful voice. She does indeed blow away Avril and easily toys with an upper register that would make Amy Lee jealous. The fact that she’s got a Good Charlotte-style knack for writing hooky punk-pop certainly doesn’t cripple her chances either.
Joy has a debut EP coming out early next month. Though she’s currently unsigned, the CD is being distributed by Sidehatch Entertainment, which has also handled Thick as Thieves, Zen Robbi, and September Twilight. “It’s almost a ‘Hey, look at me’ disc,” she says. “After some intense touring, I hope to get back in the studio and record a full-length.”
