Declan McGarry，一位25岁的歌手兼歌曲创作人曾这样戏说自己。 "坐着幻想着一些如意的事情会发生在自己的身上, 结果什麼好事也不会发生。当自己意识到时, 才发现所有的计划已完全被打乱。怀着成为一位流行歌手的梦想, Declan McGarry 曾一直在纳什维尔州洛杉磯市, 孟菲斯市和家乡加拿大曼尼托巴省三地往返奔波, 潜心学艺。 "For me, hope was never really a strategy," says the 25-year-old singer and songwriter Declan McGarry. "It was in my upbringing that sitting around hoping something would happen wasn't going to bring you anything. When I realized that, it changed my whole approach." For McGarry, that new approach meant leaving dreams of pop stardom laid stagnant in Los Angeles, Nashville and Memphis, and going back to his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to embark on an ambitious business plan to build a music career from the ground up and on his own terms. His new self-titled record, to be released on his own LT Records in 2010, is only the first stage of that plan coming to fruition, but it's the culmination of 10 years of a love of songs and songwriting. "When I heard a great song when I was young, I thought, 'I could do that,' but it took years before I could," says McGarry, who started playing the guitar and dabbling in songwriting at the age of 14, after years of piano classes. Growing up in Neil Young's hometown, though, is bound to have an affect on anyone in Winnipeg who picks up an acoustic guitar and takes a stab at songwriting. McGarry was no exception. Coming of age in the mid-90s meant the aspiring songwriter's first taste of the iconic and fiercely independent Young was 1993's Unplugged. From there, McGarry worked backwards, soaking up the beauty of Harvest Moon, Live Rust, Harvest and Decade. "After Neil, it was Springsteen," says McGarry, who also sites artists ranging from John Denver to Nancy Griffith as early influences. "I've always been a song guy. If a song hit me, it didn't matter if was pop, rock, blues or country." McGarry toyed with music in high school and even formed a band with his brother -- Less Traveled -- before attending the University of Winnipeg and securing a degree in English. Having fulfilled the obligations that the pragmatist in him demanded, McGarry moved to Toronto and started writing more seriously, sending demos to labels and producers in Los Angeles and making cold calls to whomever would take the time to talk to him. He caught the ear of a manager in Los Angeles, and although a year and a half commuting between the two cities yielded little in the way of tangible results, it led to an opportunity to record an EP at legendary Ardent Studios in Memphis with producer/engineer John Hampton.