Alex Boye is not looking for fame. Been there, done that.
He has decided that his music is not as important for what it brings him as for what it might bring to others. "I want to use music as a tool, to uplift, enlighten."
Born in England, Boye, 32, joined the LDS Church as a young man, the only member in his family. At 19, he went on a mission to nearby Bristol, and "I sang a lot. My mission president told me, 'I hope you do something with that voice.' After I got home, I started to think about how hard it is to get a start in the music business."
So he enrolled in school, studying graphics. "But I still had this longing to sing."
In 1996, Boye won a singing competition on Capital Radio (the biggest station in London), which got him his first recording contract and work with such artists as George Michael and Yazz. And he got a bunch of his friends together to form a boy band called Awesome. "I'd take them to play at church dances. Although they weren't members they had a lot of fun."
They started doing nonchurch venues as well, "and 15 managers later, we got one that had some friends in the recording business." That eventually led to a major deal with Universal Records. "We said, 'Is this real? You're not messing us around?' and they said, 'We're going to make you as big as we can.' They taught us choreography, how to interview, everything."
Awesome's first single went to No. 16 in Germany. They had hits in 15 other countries. They worked with artists such as Missy Elliott, MC Lyte, Lutricia McNeal, the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync. They did big shows. They met Prince Charles (and Boye gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon).
In 2000, Boye released his first solo album. It reached No. 12 on the European charts.
But, he says, he began to feel "a lot of pulling to the right, a lot of pulling to the left. When we started out, we were termed the good boys. We didn't drink or smoke." But he saw fame getting to his friends. "They started taking things further, and I knew sooner or later it would happen to me. I knew I had to quit."
Boye left the band and went home. He knew he had done the right thing, but he felt bad. "The hardest thing was to turn on the TV and see my band, see them singing my songs. And I wondered why they seemed so happy, when I was miserable." He began to get angry, resentful.
One night he woke up at 4 a.m., "and I was impressed to read the scriptures. As I read, it hit me that the Savior has gone through so much more than I could begin to. I had to use what he had given me and try to do something with it." That was when he decided to come to Utah.
Here, he happened on a Mormon arts festival, where he met Thurl Bailey and Gladys Knight and other LDS artists, and he began to see what might be possible.
Boye began singing; he started doing some acting on the side. He started talking at firesides (and proved so popular he has gone from one or two a month to three and four a week all over the country). He's started to write a film.
"I've been out here for about three years doing this. And I've started learning I had other talents, things I would not have tapped into if I had stayed in England."
It hasn't always been easy. "It's not a 9-to-5 job. Sometimes I feel like I'm living with no purse or scrip. But every day is a new experience to live and learn. And things are starting to fall into place."
He released a CD called "The Love Goes On." And he's now hooked up with Spired Records to release his second CD, an LDS/Contemporary Christian album titled "Alex Boye, Testimony." His Web site, www.alexboye.com, gets 10,000 hits a month.
"Alex is a unique person," says Brad Haslam, president of the record company. "With his background, his abilities, he's the complete package. He can sing, talk, write music, dance, act. It's an exciting thing."
His goal, says Boye, "is to break into the Christian market as an LDS artist."
"I feel it can happen. The way the world is, it needs songs by Janice Kapp Perry and Kenneth Cope. There's a great spirit attached to those songs, and I'd like to introduce them to the Christian market. I've talked to Gladys Knight about it — she cooked dinner for me once — and it's one of her goals, too. We'd like to expand into as many walks of life, as many faiths as possible. This kind of music needs to get out."
There is so much music that degrades, that brings people down, he says. "That's one thing I like to talk to youths about. If they are angry, depressed, I tell them to write down the lyrics of the music they listen to. They come back appalled. If they discard that music, they find themselves in better moods; they find it easier to get along, be better people. I've seen it in my own life."
Another thing he has learned is that "you can't spend your life being tossed about trying to be famous. If you're always chasing the next big hit, the next big TV show, the next Backstreet Boys act, you miss all the joy."
E-mail: carma@desnews.com