Madonna Hagerty was born in Newfoundland, the youngest in a family of 15 children. When she was five years old, she began singing with her family group at local shows. While she and her brothers and sisters had their own musical preferences, the family performed country music, often songs made famous by such smooth vocal stylists as Jim Reeves, Connie Francis and the Everly Brothers. Madonna was particularly drawn to the music of Francis, Brenda Lee, Barbra Streisandand, much later, Whitney Houston.

As Tassi was approaching her teens, she and her family moved to Labrador, where her father found work at the mammoth American air force base. There was a British base there, too, which meant there were lots of clubs and bars to keep the troops diverted. At 13, Tassi took a job as lead vocalist with a local band, one that did mostly pop tunes. "It was a natural thing for me to do," she recalls, although she concedes that her parents had some reservations about her work. Before long, the band had built a following. "One thing would lead to another," Tassi says. "You would do a gig and they would like you. Then another club would hear about you and hire you."

At around 18, Tassi relocated to Ontario, where she entered and won a live talent show. Seated in the audience during that show was a producer who specialized in jingles and commercials. He invited Tassi to sing for him. She found this subspecies of music an ideal training ground, given her vocal versatility and increasingly eclectic tastes. Over the next dozen years, she recorded national commercials for such companies as Colgate and Pizza Pizza and countless local ones for malls, car lots and government agencies. "I really cut my teeth doing that," she reflects. "You have to sell a product in a few seconds with just your voice. I loved that challenge."

During this period, Tassi married and started a family. "It was around this time," she says, "that I began thinking that I'd love to have my own recording career." But since music publishers tend to keep their best material for established artists, she had difficulty finding good songs to record. And so, in the late 1980s, she began writing her own. One of her early efforts was "My Heart's An Open Invitation." Released as a single and then as a music video, the song earned significant airplay throughout Canada.

In the late 1990s, Arista Records, the home of Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn and fellow Canadian Michelle Wright, summoned Tassi to Nashville for auditions. For a while, her prospects looked rosy. But this was an especially turbulent time for country labels, and the deal never came through.

Tassi admits she was heartbroken when she returned to Canada without her dreamed-of recording contract. But there was a silver lining waiting for her. She met producer and songwriter Antonio Pulsone, who was charmed by her music. "He heard what I heard," she beams. They have been working together ever since. Eventually, they formed an 11-piece band to back Tassi and began doing public shows and large corporate galas.

As Tassi¹s reputation blossomed in and around Toronto, a prominent local couple asked her to sing at their wedding. They were so impressed by her performance that they offered to set up a company to promote her career. Thus was born Destiny Music. The couple, as it turned out, were friends of Lisa Starbuck, president of Knoxville, Tennessee-based IMMI Records, a label that had country soul singer Con Hunley on its roster. When Starbuck heard Tassi¹s revved-up rock version of "Rocky Top" on a visit to Canada, she quickly signed her to IMMI.

There was no question but that Pulsone would oversee the recording of Tassi's debut album for IMMI. Indeed, he cut most of her tracks at the Metalworks Studios just outside Toronto. But it seemed a good idea to bring in a first-rate American producer for the project as well. Since Norro Wilson had produced many hits for Hunley, Tassi decided to approach him, even though he had already announced he was retiring from the music business. At first, Wilson rebuffed her. Then he heard her demo recording of "My Mother," and that was enough to lure him back into the studio.