She grew up in Van Buren, Maine, "potato-pickin' country…I've picked my share," she says. In high school, she played the trumpet in the band. But trumpet wasn't really her thing, although she played it for seven years. Her love of music, all kinds, continued into college. But the University of Maine, in Orono, while close to her family, wasn't the place to study music.

"I asked for an audition with the school's music department," she says. "one of the teachers at the time looked at me and said, 'There is nothing we can do for you here.' I guess that was the moment the gong would sound, had there been one. Then he said, 'you need to go to a professional music school.. a really good one.'"

Her talent would drive her, but there were a few detours on the road before she found the way home. Cheryl picked the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut, because she had family in the area, and a private music school seemed a long way from her roots in rural Maine. But while she developed a love of classical music and opera, singing opera didn't stir her soul. Neither did her first band, The Commuters. Playing bubblegum pop and new wave, ducking beer bottles tossed from the audience (a sign of enthusiasm in those post-punk days) wasn't exactly what she had in mind.

She went to Los Angeles and recorded a few songs for Screen Gem Studios. The experience was wonderful, but again, she felt there was something missing. It was when she started listening to the likes of K. D. Lang, K. T. Oslin and Bonnie Raitt that she began to realize that country music was the music that spoke to her soul. "Country was expanding so much at the time and including so many styles of music for me, that was the clincher," she says. "I felt my singing and writing style were much more at home. It was like finally fitting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together."

She was right. She's shared the stage with some of country music's biggest names. Opening for Willie Nelson in 1993 was her first big gig, and when she sang her rendition of Roy Orbison's "Cryin'", she brought the audience to its feet. She's been doing that ever since, paying her dues in local country bars, playing all the music festivals and country fairs up and down the East Coast, opening up for Patty Loveless, Ricky Van Shelton, Brooks & Dunn, Alabama, Pam Tillis, Vince Gill, and many others. Her hard work has paid off. On stage, Cheryl is a consummate professional, but she never loses that all important contact with the audience. She performs to each person, making that connection that has everyone feeling she's singing directly to them, whether it's a few hundred people at a local country bar or 25,000 at a music festival.

And now she's no longer just singing other people's songs. She's singing her own. The words written straight from her heart and paired with music written by her partner in life and music, Jeff Batter. Their songs stick with the listener long after the last note has faded. Cheryl Cormier's first CD has been released, and was eagerly anticipated by her many fans. Her music has long attracted the attention of WWYZ. 92.5 fm, one of the nation's most prominent country radio stations, which does not normally play unsigned artists, but has made an occasional exception for Cheryl.

It's a tribute to the strength of her talent as both a singer and a writer…and her big break has been a long time coming….

...But Cheryl has not stopped there.  She and her husband Jeff are currently working on her second album to be released in the fall of 2004.  After giving their lives to Jesus, they are now writing Christian as well as Praise and Worship music.  Cheryl's next CD is sure to contain some of today's finest Contemporary Christian music.  We will all just have to wait a bit to be inspired...   

TO BE CONTINUED……

by Jayne Keedle and Cheryl C. Batter