Petaluma R&B artist Simoné Mosley creates to heal - Santa Rosa Press Democrat

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As a teen, sitting in her bedroom, Simoné Mosley filled black-and-white composition notebooks with poetry.

It was the Sonoma County musician’s way of coping with her life’s struggles and escaping from the tumultuous world outside her bedroom door. Over a few years, she filled nearly 60 notebooks with meditations on feeling isolated as a Black person in a predominantly white community, heartbreak over her parents’ addictions to drugs and alcohol and recurring depression.

Today, the 32-year-old has transformed that trove of musings into songs, paired with R&B beats, her sultry voice and vulnerable lyrics that tell of the hardships she’s faced and overcome.

Mosley will perform at HopMonk Tavern in Sebastopol on Friday, Nov. 19. She also has two albums coming out: “Photosynthesis,” planned for an April 2022 release, and “Forward Back,” which she plans to release later this year. “Forward Back” is in part a tribute to her Nigerian Yoruba heritage, which she learned about only recently, in the process of making the album, and the Yoruba deity Oshun, representing purity, fertility, sensuality and love.

Through the peaks and valleys in her life, including time served in a juvenile detention center and a dark period in her early 20s, music has been a constant, and even saved her life, Mosley said.

“I swear, India Arie saved my life,” Mosley said. “Even when I ignored music, it always found me one way or another.”

Saved by music

Mosley, born in Santa Rosa and raised in Petaluma until she was 18, struggled with her identity and place in the world for most of her childhood.

Her parents were addicted to drugs and alcohol for most of her life, she said. She and her family of eight lived on food stamps and moved frequently in and out of shelters across Sonoma County. She served time at a juvenile detention center. She also felt isolated for being Black in a mostly white community.

A dangerous low point came on a cold afternoon in 2003, when Mosley was 14. She walked to the Payran Street bridge in Petaluma, with a plan to take her own life.

A few hours before, a staff member at the Sonoma County juvenile detention center had given Mosley a CD, “Voyage to India,” by soulful R&B singer India Arie. Mosley walked to the bridge carrying her black Sony Walkman, covered with skateboarding stickers.

“That album legitimately saved my life,” Mosley said. “I remember I listened to the song ‘Get It Together’ on that album, and it completely pulled me out of what I was going through.”

The lyrics:

“Get it together

You wanna heal your body

You have to heal your heart

Whatsoever you sow you will reap

Get it together”

“I made it home that day,” Mosley said.

Music stayed with her, and Mosley started making her own songs. At 17, Mosley was serving time at the Sonoma County juvenile detention center for stealing a car. One day, as she walked down a hall, a staff member heard Mosley singing and suggested she experiment with the music editing software Garage Band.

In a room at the detention facility, she worked with the program and experimented with melodies and beats. She also recorded a cover of 2001 R&B song “City High Anthem,” which carries a message that life’s circumstances don’t define you.

Her 20s held more hardship, however. In 2008, she moved to Berkeley and worked as a stripper at a Roaring ’20s-themed club. It was also at that time, she said, that she was sex trafficked along with other women.

Her escape was playing music every week on an outdoor stage at People’s Park in Berkeley. She’d cover songs by some of her favorite artists — Lauryn Hill, John Mayer, Erykuh Badu and Aretha Franklin.

“Singing on that cement stage every week gave me a break from the stripping lifestyle,” Mosley said. “It helped remind me who I was when I felt just completely lost.”

Music as a constant

In 2012, Mosley moved back to Santa Rosa to raise her first son, Noah. Three years later, after a long hiatus from music, Mosley was invited out by a friend for a night of Karaoke.

She immediately fell back into music and never looked back. She released her six-song album “Compost” in 2018 as a testament to the tribulations she has faced.

“It’s called ‘Compost’ because the songs represent the old scraps and garbage that I’m feeding my new self,” Mosley said.

The lyrics are intimate and honest. Each song is filled with R&B beats, dynamic acoustic guitar strings and Mosley’s powerful voice.

She started “Compost” in February 2018 while juggling various jobs and taking care of her two sons. She finished the album in four months, living in Santa Rosa and driving every day after work to a recording studio in San Jose to record her music. She sometimes stayed overnight on an air mattress at the studio to finish a song.

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