Having spent most of her youth in Ontario, Canada, absorbing the music of various family members – her grandfather especially, a Hawaiian Jazz and blues piano player – she was singing as far back as her memory allows. Childhood gigs at Christmas parties and fundraisers progressed to busking in her teenage years, singing blues, soul and Grateful Dead songs around the lakeside beaches of Toronto. But it was when Talise discovered the intricacies of the banjo and musicians like Ola Belle Reed, Gillian Welch and Townes Van Zandt that she found her true calling. Filming herself through the learning process and uploading the videos to YouTube laid the seeds for a faithful and ever-growing fanbase.