Calling April Renee a songwriter is like saying, “Jimi Hendrix played the guitar.” It’s not wrong exactly, but it just doesn’t come close to capturing the full scope of her work. Yes, she is a working musician and an artist, but she’s also a connector, a community builder, an entrepreneur and a seasoned veteran influencer at the uncommonly young age of 31 years old.
The artist, also known as April Teppe is the force behind multiple new ventures geared toward expanding Charleston’s creative landscape — from the burgeoning Cre8tive Friends group she built online to bring artists together in real life through meet-ups, invite-only Thursday night acoustic dinner sets set that grew out of that group and then to a new sister event series, the Songbird Songwriters Showcase, which debuts downtown at Henry’s on the Market in April.
“There is so much happening here, and I love being a part of it. Some days I can’t believe how much I’ve done in a short period of time,” said Renee, a Baltimore native who moved to Charleston in 2023. “Other days, I feel like I’m so far behind.”
The road to Charleston
The story of how Renee got to Charleston seems pretty straightforward at first.
“It all started when I got carjacked and stabbed in Baltimore, where I grew up,” she said of the June 2023 incident that left her wounded physically and emotionally. As you might expect, she was eager to put some distance between herself and the scene of that still-fresh crime.
“I’d had my car for eight days at that point. A month later, my friend invited me to join her on a vacation and I came here for the first time,” Renee said.
But then, as she continues talking, the narrative starts to shift, taking on new depth as the storyline expands. She jumps timelines, introduces an additional character or two and soon the tale has more loops than an episode of Lost.
“Everyone thought I was crazy to leave Baltimore because I had built a really successful content marketing business, worked with the Ravens football team and had a roster of great clients,” she said. “But Charleston reminded me of the French Riviera, where I’d lived before and produced my first song for Girl Gone International, a social media and digital community I helped build for women living abroad in the early days of Facebook. I know I’m jumping around, but when I came here, it was like, ‘This is where everything made sense.’ And I had to tell you the whole story for that to make sense to you, too.”
By the end of her story, it’s clear that the detours, the asides, all of the tangents aren’t beside the point at all. They are the point, sources of context, rather than confusion, and the scaffolding of a storytelling style perfectly suited to Renee’s non-linear life so far.
Creating community
Renee said she views this latest chapter in her evolving career path as something of an origin story. It’s a theme she knows well.
“My father was Sicilian, so I’d always had an interest in living in other places, especially abroad or in cultures unlike my own,” Renee said. “He came to this country and didn’t speak any English. Not a word. And I thought it was just really cool that he built a whole life and was successful despite that.
“So that has a lot to do with like I have the nerve, you know? I always wanted to be like him, to be brave like that.”
Her openness has enabled her to find points of connection everywhere.
“Charleston has been amazing to me, and the idea that I get to make music, bring people together to play and discuss music and promote the people who have meant so much to me along the way is a dream,” Renee said.
A new sound
project roster. (Fortunately, she has highly detailed websites for that.) What you need to know, beyond how to engage with her or whether a certain acoustic night is invite-only, is that there is room for everyone in her world.
Renee is a Renaissance woman for the modern era, versed in a range of skill sets and subject matter and native to the technology and social platforms that fluidly aggregate individual experiences for collective consumption.
Maybe it’s a function of her chosen medium — music and art were the original gig economy, after all, and there’s a certain universality to the hustle and flow that fosters connection even among strangers. Maybe it’s the hours she spent doing sports marketing for the Baltimore Ravens, crafting narratives to define players as individuals, as well as teammates. Maybe it’s simply a case of right place, right time — Charleston’s creative community hasn’t been this vibrant in more than a century. Most likely, it’s a combination of all of that and more.
One thing she is certain about? That all of the hours spent playing in bars and restaurants around town or teaching music lessons to students at White Key Studios, all of the conversations devoted to building consensus and community among people with inherently unique points of view and, most importantly, the expertise gained from a diverse career path have been totally worth it.
“I’m right where I’m supposed to be,” Renee said.
And through it all, she’s made fast work of making friends, a fact she seems to find surprising.
“I love people,” she said. “I’m just kind of always surprised when they love me, too.”
If past is prologue, April Renee’s future looks pretty bright from here.
Find April Renee on Instagram and Facebook: @cre8tivefriends
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