On a warm Tuesday evening, students settled into Kinsella to enjoy the annual Welcome Week Talent Show. During the event, a petite first-year with straight, dirty blonde hair, a tattoo across her collarbone and a pastel pink acoustic guitar settled on her thighs, announced she was going to sing a song she’d written a while ago about a friend. And so she began playing and singing in a soft, sweet voice.
That first-year was Madelynn Budd.
Budd began taking piano lessons from her great aunt in kindergarten. In Grade 6, she took up guitar and later returned to piano in Grade 7. Besides piano and guitar, she sings, plays the clarinet, violin and glockenspiel, but her favourite remains the piano. She wrote her first song when she was seven and has since written over 100 songs.
“I don’t necessarily remember them all or write them all down. A lot of them, I work through to help me when I’m going through stuff, but there are certain songs that I’ve kept playing over the years,” Budd said.
“Music has always been an outlet and a safe place for me … Music to me is everything we are too afraid to say without the instruments there. I guess my own music is all the letters I’ve wanted to write people,” she said.
Her favourite of her own songs is one she wrote for her friend Danielle Park, who inspired her to return to playing the piano. Park died in an accident two years ago, but her memory lives on in Budd’s song.
“I’ve written ones for my friends and my sister as well. I guess you could say my favourite songs are the ones I write for other people,” said Budd.
Reflecting on her Grade 8 year, Budd described herself as a “bad kid.”
“There was one day though, when I was walking down the hall and my teacher stopped me and said, ‘I see so much potential in you. You’re going to do really good things.’ It was like someone had finally seen past the bad kid, which was what I always wanted and he just inspires me to be the best person I can be,” she said.
Her father, who grew up in rough situation, is also an inspiration to her.
“He’s utterly caring and non-judgmental and makes me feel like I can accomplish anything.”
Budd always enjoyed writing and music, so creating her own songs comes naturally.
“I like how the way you put words together will affect other people,” she said.
Although she has a love for music, she has an aversion to the heavy emphasis on theory that many modern music courses tend to focus on, so she plans to major in psychology and gerontology.
“Realistically, I’d like to work with older people and troubled youth and stuff like that. But, if I could do anything I wanted with this degree, I would open up an eating disorder clinic and rehab house here in Fredericton because there isn’t one in the Maritimes. Someone needs to.”
Although for now, she would be content playing in the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival next year.
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The song featured in the video is about one of Budd’s friends. When they were in Grade 10 or 11, her friend started dating someone who was emotionally and physically abusive.
“It was really hard to see her go through that and the next person she started dating got her addicted to heroin. I didn’t see her for a while after that,” said Budd.
When she returned to school, they reconnected.
“The other kids didn’t see her as she was anymore. They just saw her as a promiscuous drug addict.”
This past summer, her friend started seeing someone else and is now living well in British Columbia.
“She just blossomed into the person I always knew she was. That’s why this song means a lot to me, because you don’t see many people go through that, change and make it.”
