“My love has always been toward music,” Katie Todd explains from a cozy coffeehouse in Chicago’s Boystown Neighborhood.

Like so many artists, the path from hobby to career has been a hard-won victory. “We were finishing up the album and I just stumbled upon this thing for Summerfest in Milwaukee. It was this competition that was accepting songs to be an opening act.”

Todd had just begun recording her debut album and despite the urgings of her bandmates, she submitted her still-unfinished track to an online vote. “We ended up winning this competition and that kind of triggered what was to come, which was being an opening act for a lot of different, great artists.”

Playing “the world’s largest music festival,” would be daunting to acts of a lesser calibre, but Todd took it in stride. “It was incredible for a lot of different reasons,” she says. “You’re playing in front of thousands of people and you don’t know how you’re going to be received and it’s really nerve-wracking and terrifying and amazing at the same time. We got a great response from it. And they continued asking us back.”

Now a headliner, herself, Todd ably balances work life with that of her family. “That’s my daughter,” she beams, as the picture of an adorable tot flickers on her cell phone. “Let me show you one where it doesn’t look like she has oatmeal all over her face.”

Todd’s new album, Mumbled Speech tells the tale of a woman striving to hold it all together. “I’m not going to fall asleep at the wheel with you,” she promises on “Love Love Love You.” With a U.S. tour in the works and a new record to promote, that all seems likely.

Check out Mumbled Speech and more about Katie Todd at katietodd.com.