Young singer/songwriter has been strumming since age 8.

At a time in life when many teens struggle for self-definition, Lana McMullen knows she’s on the road to her future.

A freshman at Bainbridge High School, McMullen sings her original compositions at the park district’s First Fridays concert on May 7, accompanying herself on guitar.

“I’ve always really loved music since I was really little,” McMullen said. “And then I was really influenced by country music when I was growing up, because Shania Twain played the guitar and I was obsessed with her.”

McMullen’s request, at age 7, to learn to play guitar was met with initial skepticism by her mother, who knew her daughter hadn’t stuck with piano lessons.

“I started three times and I quit,” McMullen said, “so she was like ‘not until I’m sure that you can really commit yourself to it.”

When McMullen turned 8, she started studying guitar – first with a teacher who McMullen only remembers as “Robin,” then with island music teacher Barbara Deering, and, most recently, with Indianola musician Lynn Ferguson.

While McMullen credits both parents with “good voices,” neither sings with a group or plays an instrument. Nor does McMullen’s older sister.

“It’s just me,” she said.

While her parents may not have been musically influential, McMullen says they gave her an invaluable tool to develop her talent: a big dose of work ethic and persistence.

“They drummed it into me that I can be whatever I want to be,” she said, “and that I’ll have to make myself what I want to be, because no one’s going to help me.”

That advice sustained McMullen during the first difficult years of study, when she struggled to develop the coordination needed to chord with her left hand while finding rhythms with the right – and to sing at the same time.

She also had to come to grips with the mathematical underpinnings of music, at a time when math was something of a mystery altogether, she says.

“There were a lot of times when I wanted to quit but I didn’t,” she said. “I just plowed on through, and I think it was because I saw the bigger picture. I really wanted to learn to play and sing at the same time. That was my goal, because I just knew that was what I was supposed to do.”

McMullen began to sing at Seabold Second Saturdays open mic when she was 12. She performed with the Experience Music Choir, traveling to Seattle twice weekly to join the group.

Today, she performs as much as she can, “getting out there,” and she is making a demo record of songs she’s written that have roots in the folk music idiom.

“I’ve just kind of written how I feel. I don’t really care what kind of singer I am,” she said.

New songs come when McMullen is picking out chords without a plan.

“I’ll just be, like, singing along words with it,” she said, “and I’ll write them down as I go. Whatever kind of mood the chords convey is what I sing about, and usually there’s something going on in my life that contributes to it.”

She expanded her solo work with a concert at Pegasus Coffee House last February for Island Music Guild, and recently played for a benefit at the Grange.

Performing on the island has been important to McMullen, where the warmth and support she’s received helped her shake some of her fear of performing.

“At first when I started playing and singing, I was so nervous,” she said. “Just the fact that there were people watching me. But Larry Dewey, who I’m playing with Friday, he came up to me and said, ‘Lana, what would you rather be doing right now?’

“I couldn’t think of anything.”

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Fifteen-year-old singer/songwriter Lana McMullen opens the park district’s First Fridays concert, 7:30 p.m. May 7 at Island Center Hall. McMullen is followed at 8:30 p.m. by island folksinger Larry Dewey.

Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for youth ages 6-18, available at the door.

Information: 842-2306 ext. 25.