Photo courtesy of Laura Nicholson
Laura Nicholson
We all have a pandemic song. The song that came on the radio or appeared on Spotify at the perfect moment sometime in the early days of the pandemic—that described how we were feeling, that took all those feelings we didn’t know we’d been bottling since March 17 and put them to music and made us feel a little more connected to a world we couldn’t access.
The refrain of Miranda Lambert's 2019-released “Bluebird," “Keep the light on in your soul and keep the Bluebird in your heart,” brought me to tears in April 2020 and became my pandemic motto. The irony isn’t lost on me that Laura Nicholson’s soulful tune about stepping outside your comfort zone is also “Bluebird.”
The song, which she wrote pre-pandemic with her friend Lisa Withers, “talks about trusting your wings and living your authentic self,” she says.
Nicholson’s forthcoming Bluebird EP could be our new pandemic soundtrack. Even though most of the songs were recorded prior to the coronavirus, they are honest and raw with an echo of hope, evoking the feel of pandemic-incubated tunes.
The cherry on top of the Spoonbridge? The Eagan-native recorded the whole album in St. Paul. “I’ve always just wanted to be my own thing, so I’m so proud of the fact that I made it here in the winter,” Nicholson says. Beanie on, she recorded the album in 2019 with a local friend and producer.
“I go back to Tennessee, and people make fun of my accent, and I’m like ‘I’m proud of it, it’s staying—don’t even,’” she says. “You don’t know how good it is until you leave.”
Nicholson is just one branch on a family tree ripe with musical talent. “My grandparents met in choir, and they raised their kids around the piano,” she says. “At Christmas time, we spent way more time around the piano than around presents.”
At age eleven, she started writing songs. “I would take songs that were already written and then put my own words to them,” she says. In her teen years, Nicholson picked up a guitar, and during her sophomore year of college, played her first show at a Dunn Brothers Coffee near Bethel University. “I was just expecting a few friends to come out, but we packed the Dunn Brothers,” she says. “They were like, ‘you can come anytime.’” She went on to play the Aster Café about once a month over several years, in between trips to Nashville.
The budding starlet left Minnesota for Nashville after graduating from Bethel in 2015 and working a desk job for a year.
“Being new in Nashville in the music scene was so easy, ‘cause everyone knows what it’s like to be new, it’s such a transplant [city],” Nicholson says. “My dad and I drove down, and he helped me unpack but he had to catch a flight again that day. My bed wasn’t delivered yet, I remember being like, ‘What the heck am I doing? This is crazy.’ … I cried all the way home from the airport dropping him off. And then I was like, okay, I could either unpack—probably like a normal person would do—get all my stuff put away, or I could just go out. I’m in music city, I’m just gonna go to a show.”
Five years later, she’s played Nash’s iconic Bluebird Café a handful of times—the same little spot that Maren Morris, Taylor Swift, and countless other legends played on their way to the top.
Nicholson released an album years ago, filled with songs from her teenage years, but since removed it from Spotify. “I haven’t released music in five years, so this will be kind of my debut EP,” she says. “I just feel like my writing has changed so much since then and reintroducing myself with these songs—they’re straight up from my journals, they’re so honest.”
Photo courtesy of Laura Nicholson
Laura Nicholson Blue Jacket
She planned to release her re-debut Bluebird a year ago but held onto it when the pandemic hit and wiped 2020 from the record. Now, she’s reconstructing her canceled tour and teasing out her songs before it drops.
The album threads along the themes of being honest with your fears and trusting the process. “I’ve had a lot of doubts along my journey too, days when I’m like ‘Do I want to just be a songwriter, or do I want to go out and sing my songs and be an artist?’ I wasn’t always so sure,” Nicholson says. “But when I collected a few of these songs, it just felt so personal to me, I don’t think I could really imagine anybody else singing the songs that I’ve been writing.
The caboose of the EP, “This Too Shall Pass,” is the only song on the album to emerge from the last 18-plus months. “It’s just praying that all this is going to pass one day, and you’re going to look back,” Nicholson says. “It’s pretty spot on when it comes to the quarantine times.”
You’ll hear a mix of influences throughout the EP: “Bonnie Raitt, Fleetwood Mac, Etta James, and Billy Joel all mixed together in one,” she says. “Kacey Musgraves is somebody I really look up to. She has a way of just saying it and not having to be so poetic in her songs. She’s just straight-up in her lyrics, and I really admire that.”
In “I Broke My Own Damn Heart,” which dropped on September 22, you get a glimpse of that Kasey-like simplicity, as Nicholson describes a relationship she knew wasn’t going to last but let go on anyways. “I’ve been playing it for a couple years now and I get people coming up to me after shows being like, ‘oh my gosh, I did the same thing,’” she says. “We’ve all kind of been there, it’s just a part of growing up and figuring out your head over your heart.”
And those blusey sounds Nicholson was raised on show up throughout her tunes as well. “I grew up listening to Etta James, so you’ll hear a bit of those—I call it ear candy—types of notes, like minors,” she says.
Her biggest music crush is Brandi Carlile. One of the many dreams driving the 29-year-old is touring with Carlile. But “talking big-bucks dream, I would totally collab with John Mayer,” Nicholson says. Alongside her own show dates, Nicholson is seeking an opening slot on a bigger tour.
Her next single to drop, “The Rain’s Gonna Bring You Roses,” is a metaphor for hardship especially poignant these days. “It talks about how storms are needed for growth, rain’s needed for growth,” Nicholson says. “I have experiences and chapters in my life where I feel like I wouldn’t be stronger at all unless I had gone through the crappy times.”
Live music is ready to rebound, it seems, after a year of pivots. “The live-streaming video—stuff like that—is a tool that we never used really that much before,” Nicholson says, “so that’s been kind of cool to be able to learn other tricks to reach fans.” And Nashville won’t be knocked down—like taking the soundtrack out of a movie, life becomes hollow and eerie without music. Nicholson’s very first post-pandemic show was at The Listening Room in Nashville, where a handful of artists play their songs in a round. “You could hear a pin drop in the room,” she says. “Even more than before, people are ready to listen, they want to be there, they buy a ticket and get out because they miss it. … It just feels a little bit more authentic than it did before—because of being alone and cooped up for so long, everyone’s ready for new music.”
Nicholson is already on the road: She hit Carlos Creek Winery a few weeks ago, played a hometown show at Amsterdam Bar & Hall in St. Paul September 25, and is on to shows in Chicago and Charlotte in October.
When we spoke over coffee in the North Loop in September, Nicholson seemed thrilled to be back in her home state. “The people you grew up with, they become your roots,” she says. She keeps in touch with friends from high school and college and was eager to showcase her new work for her Minnesota fanbase. “Those friends in high school were the first friends that I started showing my songs to, so I think it’s kind of cool for them to see the songs develop over time.”
The Morning After
Laura Nicholson’s sound is one of those hard-to-pin voices. Like Maren Morris and Elle King, she won’t be cornered into a single genre label. Not quite country, also not folk, and not all blues or soul, her sound is unique and promising.
Hometown shows are always fun, of course, but what makes the world feel the size of a cherry tomato is when the artist starts pointing people out from the stage. Nicholson pointed out college and high school friends, shouted out “mom and dad’s friends, hey,” and even called out a girl standing near us, saying with a laugh, “don’t look at my hair—my hairdresser’s the problem.”
Nicholson’s slightly raspy voice is made for live music. She seemed a little shy at first, stuffing her hands in her pockets a couple times like a younger Taylor Swift.
She started with a string of songs backed by her band, featuring a handful of her own tunes. The beginning of the show felt a bit unpolished, which I didn’t mind in a small, standing-room venue like the Amsterdam. But Nicholson found better pacing and seemed to relax during her acoustic set, finishing strong with a mix of covers and tracks off her coming album.
Now, anyone who knows my obsessive love of Maren Morris knows that The Highwomen, comprised of Morris, Brandi Carlile, and Natalie Hemby, come in close behind. So, when Nicholson broke out “Crowded Table”—a tune she’d only recently started playing—I swooned. If The Highwomen ever need a sub, I’d vote for Nicholson.
Songs about longtime friendships always get me. (Alexa, play “Old Friends” by Ben Rector.) And Nicholson’s “Friend,” coming on Bluebird, fit the rule. The chorus emulates that with Kacey Musgraves' plainspoken-style lyrics: “I thank God I found you, friend.” And the line that made me and my husband—who are notoriously late to everything—flash each other big-eyed smiles: “I took a wrong turn and showed up a little late…”
Nicholson found her stage legs quickly and showed us the humanity and personality behind live music—without all the smoke and lights—through the intimacy of a small bar show.
Look out, Brandi Carlile fan club, Laura Nicholson might be opening your next concert.
