Saving lives through music

Music is much more than a hobby for Newport Beach indie-rocker Stacy Clark. It is a career, a creative outlet, therapy and, most importantly, it is a lifesaving tool.

Nominated for Best Female and Best Song in tomorrow night’s Orange County Music Awards, Clark is the co-founder and spokeswoman for Music Saves Lives, an organization that teams with various musicians and venues with the goal of educating high school and college students about blood donations and increasing the local and national blood supply.

After being diagnosed with a blood platelet disorder as a high school senior, Clark received an emergency blood transfusion that saved her life, and as her music career picked up, she looked for a way to give back.

Since Clark and her manager Russel Hornbeek founded the organization in 2005 it has collected more than 3,000 units of blood and registered about 2,000 people to the national and international bone marrow registries. This month, Music Saves Lives was also named a finalist for the MySpace Impact Award, recognizing those who use the online community to change the world.

“There are so many causes, but this is dear to me because my life was saved and I knew I could save someone’s life in return,” said Clark, 26. “We really are making a difference and saving people’s lives, and it’s great that people are having fun doing it.”

But long before the singer/songwriter was saving others, she looked to writing as her personal therapy, and has continued to use her poetry as inspiration for her lyrics.

“When I was 7, my dad was killed in a drunk-driving accident, and my family told me to write out my feelings,” she said. “Since then, I always write about how I feel and how I see things, and I think others can get something from what I went through.”

Clark’s life experiences make for meaningful and powerful songs, which is what earned her a position among the top five nominees for Best Song this year, competing against more than 600 submissions.

“Her songs have really powerful melodies, and they are obviously based on personal experience,” said the local award show’s founder and co-producer Martin Brown. “She writes very much from the heart, and her philosophies on life are really good.”

Growing up listening mostly to folk, classic and indie-rock and blues, Clark’s influences include The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Etta James and Bjork, though she bashfully admits the first concert she attended was Milli Vanilli.

Born to be an entertainer, Clark purchased her first acoustic guitar at 15 after seeing Sarah McLachlan perform and taught herself to play.

“I grew up a dancer, so I’ve always loved entertaining,” said Clark, who also incorporates the piano, clarinet and African drums into her music. “I wasn’t intimidated by it because once you’ve worn a tutu and leotard in front of people, it’s only uphill from there.”

A year later, Clark was recording an album at a recording studio in her hometown of Buffalo, where she was interning while working as a soccer referee and a waitress to pay for the record.

“When I was young, I told myself, ‘I am going to do this,’” she said. “When you want something, you really have to go for it.”

The next step was booking a national tour while in the midst of her freshman year as an art and design student at the State University of New York in Plattsburgh. Clark spent two months of the following summer playing dozens of venues between New York and California.

Mesmerized by California’s beauty, Clark moved to Newport Beach in 2004 and has since recorded and released her “Unusual” EP, earning her recognition as last year’s Southern California Music Award’s Best Female Performer, 2006 and 2007’s Best Out of County Artist in the Inland Empire Music Awards, a Best International Artist nominee in the Toronto Independent International Music Awards and an MTV Artist on the Brink.

Two songs from the album, “Unusual” and “Say What You Want,” made it onto a compilation album put out by Something Corporate frontman Andrew McMahon and are also played before each show on the pop rock band Plain White T’s’ national tour. Clark is in the preproduction stages of her first full-length album, slated to be released this fall.

“My ultimate goal is music, and I will continue to do what I can with what I have,” she said. “I want to be a role model and an artist that people can look up to.”

Find out if Stacy Clark is named this year’s Best Female at the Orange County Music Awards at 8 p.m. tomorrow at the Grove of Anaheim. Tickets are $22.50. For more information, visit www.orangecountymusicawards.com .

IF YOU GO:Stacy Clark

WHAT:

WHEN: 7 p.m., April 14

WHERE: Mauve, 3305 Newport Blvd., Suite E, Newport Beach

COST: Free

INFO: Visit www.myspace.com/ilovestacyclark, www.stacyclark.net . To find out more about Music Saves Lives, visit www.musicsaveslives.com .