April Phillips doesn’t like being told she can’t do something and that strong will guided her through a health crisis and headlong into a career.

“I was literally singing before I was talking. I was driving down the road with my mom and singing in the way a one and a half year old can in the backseat of the car. I was not really talking much, not that I couldn’t, I would just rather sing everything, to the point my mom actually took me to the doctor. He said, ‘She’s pronouncing the words; she’s doing it, she’s fine. Don’t worry.’” recounts April, with a laugh.

“It was just really one of those natural things. I would get up in front of family and friends when I was four years old and put on a little show. I can never remember not singing.”

Her singing took a back seat for a while as she approached adulthood. “ I went through college, I’ve worked jobs, I was in the legal field, I’ve worked everything in the family law system, but nothing ever really fit with me. About every couple of years I’d move on to something else, but I was always singing in the midst of all that.”

“When I was 20, I thought maybe I should do this, see what happens, maybe I should move to Nashville. Then I had some really severe health problems, I had polycystic ovarian syndrome and I gained 140 pounds in a year and a half, which is more than I weighed when I started gaining the weight. No one could figure out why it was happening, all of a sudden I was diabetic, I had high blood pressure, at 21 years old.”

For years April faced cynical doctors writing her off and counting her out. What they didn’t count on was April’s tenacity. “I got married, decided I wanted to have a baby, and then I couldn’t get pregnant. I had three years of fertility drugs with no results, then they told me, ”your body is just too messed up, you’re never going to be able to have a baby. Even if you lost the weight, which we don’t think you’ll be able to do on your own, you’ll probably still never be able to have a baby.”

Through the turmoil of those years, April’s marriage fell apart, but April persevered, making the decision to have gastric bypass surgery, which permitted her to lose 151 pounds. Her luck turned around and she met the love of her life and remarried. “Nine months after I had the surgery, I got pregnant,” she says with pride. “My little boy will be five in June. After that experience of being told you can’t do it by everyone, it was like, suddenly, I was beating all the odds, when I hadn’t been able to do that before.”

“I finally hit 30 and was like, you know what? I’m not 20 years old anymore, if I’m going to do this, I have to do it now. If I wait too much longer it will never happen.”

Her professional career in music sprang into being a little over a year ago, “It was a crazy fluke thing actually. I had done a ‘mock Idol’ contest in the community that I live in and one of the judges had a background in music. I won the contest and a man came up to me and talked to me about maybe managing me, seeing what we could do. We just picked up from there, put a band together in a few months time and got on the road and started playing. It just went from there.”

April’s career hit a milestone just eight weeks after it began when she opened for John Anderson and Blake Shelton, “I was in front of almost 20,000 people, it was the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and second to having my son that was it! I always knew this is what I was supposed to do, but that was the defining moment. You go out in front of that many people and people are screaming and yelling and really excited, it’s amazing.” April and her band have been traveling over the Southeast trying to get their names out to the people. She is collaborating with fellow Apopka, Florida, native Jeff Hurst, a writer with Dan Hodges music, out of Nashville. She received her first single from Jeff this past Christmas eve, and song called "Standing", and three weeks later, she performed that first single in front of a live audience. Six weeks after that, she went to Nashville and recorded six songs for her demo which is about to be pitched to every major label in Nashville. She also just finished taping a music video for the song "Standing" which should be released this month.

April made her television debut as the “Producer’s Pick” in the search for “The Next GAC Star” on Nashville ’s GAC TV in 2008. Her first song ‘Standing’ has been released and she is currently working on a video for the song with Gina Maria Incandella playing her daughter.

Reflecting on the difference in her life today and the years when having no faith ruled her days, she says, “I was just surviving, I was accepting whatever was handed to me and being okay with that. Just because I felt like that was the only thing I could do. My eyes finally opened up and I saw everything around me. I am on my way!”