From Queen City with Love | The Slice Girlz

Andrea Moore & Dawn Custer are the kind of women you just want to hang out with. From the moment our conversation started, I was captivated by their vibrant energy and partnership. Andrea and Dawn live in Allegany County,  Maryland, in the heart of the Appalachian mountains, where they have formed the rockin’ girl band the Slice Girlz! 

As Dawn described their relationship, “We supercharge any room we walk into, especially when we are together… when we come together, it just feels effortless.” Anyone who spends time with the Slice Girlz would agree with this sentiment. In addition to jamming out and writing songs together, the Slice Girlz hosts weekly open mic nights, with an overwhelming amount of regular musicians showing up to play. At the end of each open mic, they get together to jam. Andrea plays the electric bass and sings, and Dawn plays many instruments, including the guitar, flute, and mandolin, and sings as well.  

Dawn and Andrea applied for a Let’s Choose Love grant to create an original LP record From Queen City with Love, featuring the Cumberland Collective. From Queen City with Love will be full of original material from Allegany County musicians like Dawn and Andrea. The goal is to record and produce 10 - 12 songs on the LP featuring ten or more musicians. Living in a rural area, the Slice Girlz feel it is important to share the original music of the fantastic musicians they know and work with to share their art with a larger audience. 

Can you describe your project and what you hope to achieve from it?

At first, the Slice Girlz planned to make and share the LP with the world; that’s it. But as they started synthesizing their ideas, they decided to magnify their overall impact. Aside from bringing the Cumberland Collective musicians together, recording their original music, and sharing it with the world, the Slice Girlz are determined to create an ongoing project that will live on in Allegany County. 

“We made a big milestone and established a beneficiary for the proceeds to help control the proceeds and royalties from the LP. We decided we will donate all proceeds to a local non-profit, the Allegany Arts Council in Cumberland, to help raise money for their outdoor entertainment space.”  The Allegany Arts Council has a grant to create an outdoor performance space but needs to provide matching funds to create this space. 

“It is a synergy of sorts because when you get synergy, the sum of all the parts are greater than all the parts; things just click and come together. The marketing and exposure from all the different musicians on one production piece will propel it much further than just one person recording an album because that’s how synergy works. It is really becoming a community project.” said Dawn. She also shared that she and Andrea have an original song that will be on the album called “Synergy,” describing this experience they are having in the creation of From Queen City with Love. 

What inspired this project? 

When asked this question, Andrea responded, “ I have always wanted to make an original album to just experience the process. Dawn already had an amazing song called ‘Green’; I thought that was amazing and wanted to get it out there. But living in Middle Appalachia, there are so many amazing people who may never be able to get their music out and share it with the world. So now we have a way to share all this positive, beautiful music with the world. The pandemic hit our community hard, and now businesses are open and have live music everywhere. Our community has a political and cultural divide, and we lost many great people, people we couldn’t see or connect to before they passed. This is one way to bring the community together, and these champions of the arts will be proud of us.” 

Dawn added, “Sharing and putting the resources into a larger pot that is going to a larger cause, that is bigger than ourselves, I am so good with that. We didn’t really know all of the details at first, but as things are coming and the more giving we are, it seems to be falling into place. The less selfish we are, taking our ego and arrogance out of it, the better this project is becoming. It is amazing how much love can do when you start combining things and putting them together; it is just magical.” 

“Music never dies; it’s not my song; I’m just a vessel for it. We are finding a lot of synchronicity in this process. Other people are also allowing themselves to be a vessel for these ideas to come out. By putting that into music, these ideas will live forever. I am just grateful the idea picked me so I can orchestrate it.” added Dawn. 

How are you using your Let’s Choose Love Grant? 

The Slice Girlz are utilizing their Let’s Choose Love Grant to produce the album, copyright fees, and the CD release party. Making their general overhead costs lower, the Let’s Choose Love Grant allows the Slice Girlz and the Cumberland Collective to put more time and energy into their LP. It allows the project to immediately start generating revenue that will be donated to the Allegany Arts Council. From Queen City with Love will be distributed digitally and in hard copy worldwide. 

What does success look like?

“Happiness. And getting some local musicians working together, collaborating more in the future, and putting out their own LPs. Hopefully, people will start to recognize these artists from our album. I hope the LP will still be around and maybe continue to rake in revenue for the Arts Council for years to come. I hope the local radio will play our songs so local people can hear these songs, and maybe even beyond that.” said Andrea, already thinking about how to continue the positive momentum. 

Dawn seconded much of what Andrea had to say and added, “Success is sharing a positive message. Creating music that evokes positive feelings. When my son and I were home during the pandemic, he would do all his school work quickly and then we would write music, preparing for people to celebrate when all of this is over… Purring the good energy out there like ‘here it is’, the pandemic is over and there was a paradigm shift in human behavior, so let’s celebrate.” 

Overall, the Slice Girlz hope to find matching funding to bolster their recording and advertising efforts. They hope From Queen City with Love reaches at least 100 people, but they are ambitious and think they could sell up to 1,000 LPs. Once the album is completed, sometime in the Fall of 2023, the Cumberland Collective will host a CD release party and then gift the project and future funds to the Arts Council. 

You can learn more about the Slice Girlz and the From Queen City with Love project on their Facebook page.