Girl, 13, rides her voice to New York

Her friends have been behind her, giving her confidence and feeding her dreams, still Audreyanna Easterling said it’s sometimes hard to explain to them that she can’t always go do the normal things they do.

The 13-year-old E.B. Stanley Middle School student said that being a teen, at least for her, doesn’t always mean heading to a movie with friends.

“They don’t understand that in the summer I have to work,“ she said.

And work is in New York City, 580 miles from the home in Abingdon where her 17-year-old poodle Pepper finds a welcome lap.

Audreyanna was 8 the first time she was on stage in front of thousands. She danced a hip-hop routine at the Modeling Association of America International convention in New York and earned an honorable mention.

That was around the time Ethel Smawley first noticed that Audreyanna had voice.

The then-7 or 8-year-old girl had been fooling around on the stage at Smawley’s Kingsport, Tenn., clothes shop The Encounter.

“She started singing opera or something,“ Smawley said. “We didn’t realize that she could really sing.“

The stage there at Smawley’s is the one Audreyanna had grown up on. At 5, she was out there in a royal blue prom dress cut down to fit.

She’s never really been afraid of the stage, it was always a playground.

“When I get on stage I feel like I belong,“ she said, sitting cross-legged on the couch at her Abingdon home. “It just gives me a happy feeling; it’s like an honor. Five-thousand people are looking at you and screaming your name. They don’t know me; they don’t know who I am … but they think that my voice and actions on stage are good.“

Last year Audreyanna won first place in New York. She sang “My Favorite Things.“

Last month, the accolades came again, this time closer to home. She was named the No. 1 second soprano for students in Washington County. She’s No. 7 in the Southwest Virginia district.

The stage has always been a simple place for Audreyanna. It’s what the stage has meant for her off-stage life that’s a bit more complex. The success under the spotlight comes from work, lots of it, and lots of missed sleepovers, movie dates and school sports games.

When she’s readying for a New York competition she takes lessons every day with Jim Wilson, working on homework during the commute to and from Johnson City. Wilson gets the credit for helping Audreyanna go from an honorable mention to first place at the annual Modeling Association of America International convention.

Back stage before every big competition she’s on the phone with Wilson doing breathing exercises.

He taught her to really project her voice, a talent not always so popular with classmates, said her mom.

She’s come home crying because other kids made fun of her for singing too loud in chorus class, Jeanette Easterling said.

They’d tell her “all we hear is your voice.“ She’d tell her mom, “I can’t help it.“

In New York, she gets the teasing for the way she talks, not how loud.

“I’ve tried out for a movie and they’d say ‘Ah if only you didn’t have that accent,’“ she said. “Sometimes I wish I could have a New York accent.“

She says that singing has helped her dialect. It spaces out her words and slows her speech down a bit.

Abingdon Audreyanna is the one in skinny jeans and Converse. One set of friends wears boots. Another wears Uggs. Still another sport Birkenstocks.

New York Audreyanna started when she turned 10. It was that summer that she started going to the big city for auditions and theater and dance classes. She started doing it alone at 12.

“I felt really grown up,“ she said of her first time taking a car from the airport to the apartment.

She stays at her mom’s friends house in Greenwich Village. Mostly though, she’s alone, making her way to and from classes every day.

In Virginia, her mom makes her do her own laundry and clean up after herself. She cooks and does dishes and takes care of things around the house. Learning to do that has helped her in New York, she said.

“I make a list in the morning of what I need to do and pick-up,“ Audreyanna said.

She said her mom taught her to stand next to someone she trusted on the subway.

Her two groups of friends, the ones in New York and the ones Southwest Virginia, have never met.

“The people here think it’s so cool the way the people in New York live,“ she said. “If I could have my friends here in New York, I’d live in New York.“

On the other hand, she said if the New York group ever were to visit, they’d be like, “Wow, you live in the country country,“ she said. “And this isn’t even the country compared to where some of my other friends live.“

Smawley said being a model in Southwest Virginia is hard because there is nowhere to show their talents so they often have to go outside the region.

“(Audreyanna) took the opportunity given to her by her mother and went with it,“ Smawley said. “People aren’t coming here to Southwest Virginia looking for you. You have to keep your skills honed and reach out if you want something different.“

Audreyanna has reached out, and she’s grown up a lot. She’s had to learn that you can’t always be an overnight success and you can’t get too discouraged by rejection.

Sometimes she feels like she’s 13, she said. Other times, she doesn’t. She feels more adult, like 16.

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t fit in.“

She said she can’t wait for high school, she’ll have time between classes and she’ll feel like she’s older and smarter, she said.

“And when you’re a senior you can really drive,“ she said.

Before then, though, she’s hoping to get picked to go to Japan next summer.

She’s going to enjoy the competitions while she can, noting she’ll likely quit once college rolls around. She’s determined to spend those years in New York, in the fashion design program at New York University.

“I think it will fade away when I have to focus on other things,“ she said. “If I could, I’d do it for the rest of my life.“

This summer was more normal. She decided to give New York a break, opting to stay home with friends. Her mom had told her the next few years would be the best of her life. She told her that once she grows out of being a kid, she’ll never get it back. She wanted to enjoy it.

“I felt so normal, it was great,“ Audreyanna said.

She had slumber parties nearly every night.

Contact Caitlin Sullivan at or call (276) 628-7101.