Sheila Nicholls - Songs From the Bardo

IN HER OWN WORDS...... My parents lived in a gin and tweed world and had questionable taste in music. Nonetheless Mum insisted I take up a plethora of instruments that I never practiced. God bless 'er. By the time I was 14 I could play the flute violin, piano and guitar, all not very well.

It was dancing that really shined my oyster. England in the eighties was an easy place to drink and club, so naturally the Embassy Suites opened for teenagers on Tuesdays. It was a rite of passage in Colchester; you had to look fourteen to get in, which meant twelve for girls. Here I was initiated into funky, Stevie Wonder, the Gap Band, Chaka Khan, Parliament, , K.C. and the Sunshine Band, entwined with Eurythmics, Shakatak, Human League, Pointer Sisters, Echo and the Bunnymen, Simple Minds, Madness, and sweaty melodic crowded flirting. It was a non-parental world. They knew little about my antics 'til dad smelled a rat and sent me to boarding school. I loathed it and slept with my physics teacher.

My one redeeming experience there was that in order to find privacy, I started to frequent the music school as you could lock the door of the practice rooms. Having studied music GCSE for the previous two years, I was loaded with musical theory. It was here I really started to write songs to stave off depression and create an island of focus in my life. It was a private experience to prove to myself I was still in there. Melodramatic maybe, but felt mighty poignant at the time. Apparently it worked to some degree. It however, never occurred to me that i could be an artist or have that option to make it my life. After failing my A levels twice it all came to a head on May 29th 1989, when after a couple of hours of preconceivement , I streaked at Lords Cricket ground on a bright day when England were playing Australia live on TV to 20 million people. Good times. Dad was not so chipper.

I escaped to visit a friend in Malibu CA, where no one knew what "A" levels were, and you could have a beer with Guns and Roses. Immediately my perspective altered. I have essentially been here since, in the land of reinvention. I procured various under-the-table work, including teaching toddler music classes in synagogues in the valley, delivering vegetarian food to aids patients, music studio assistant, and as a waitress on sunset plaza. Most of my spare time I spent with the non profit Citykids foundation and I was a member of the youth council.

We spent the riots on Normandie, Reginald Denny and me, and I still really didn't know what the fuck I was doing in LA. So I bought a VW bus and set sail. A year later it predictably broke down in NY after a dead concert at Madison Square, at which point I became a nanny on the upper west side and started going to open mics at the Hootenanny at the Sidewalk Cafe on avenue A. It was around then I had a change of heart and realized it was just time to commit to this music thing. So with help from friends at Citykids NY, we started a 9 piece band called Sheila Nicholls and the Splendidfrock. We played Bleeker St. and CBGB's for a year before a 'frock' demo conjured an invite to a Los Angeles Studio to cut my first record. I spent the next few years playing LA venues like Luna Park and Genghis Cohen, and putting on a woman-centric show called Chicks in Arms.

When Hollywood records randomly first said hi, I told them I wasn't interested and that they were responsible for making children into consumers at too young an age. They seemed to find this cute, it probably was. I deeply respected how Ani di Franco had negotiated some serious uncharted territory as an independent, however, I decided to take a different route, thinking I could pioneer my egalitarian principles into a large American corporation, with them thinking I would actually do what they wanted me to. During this time I released two records, Brief Strop in 1999, and Wake in 2002.

It was a fun and amazing ride. I was never a fan of how capitalism affects art and the artist. It can be disempowering when it gets formulaic. Call me sensitive but because my songs had always been fueled by the lure of sanctuary, when the deal ended I felt a bit discombobulated, off centre, and I realized I wanted a more gentle existence for a while. I was just a voyeur after all. So I bought a house and built a studio and settled in. I now have a baby girl and live with my partner in Los Angeles. We have grapes and tomatoes in the garden and are still both anarchic at heart.

Brief Strop - 1999

This was an independently recorded piano vocal record. When Hollywood picked it up they wanted me to re-record the whole thing. I didn't care for the Disney aesthetic so I said no but we added a few over-dubbed instruments. It went top ten in the US college radio charts and Fallen For You was featured in the film and on the soundtrack of High Fidelity. I toured extensively across the US.

Wake - 2002

Inevitably they were after a 'radio friendly' record, Wake was definitely a larf to record, suddenly every thing got real big sounding. Glen Ballard produced a good number of tunes bringing in some sweet players like Mike Elizondo on bass and Matt Chamberlain on drums. Again touring extensively in the US, opening for KD Lang in Europe, and playing the tonight show with Jay Leno.

Songs From the Bardo - 2009

A collection of songs mostly written and recorded over the last five years. With help of my now good friend Lynne Earls (pro tools queen), Jez Colin and some of the same great musicians, Luis Conte, Matt Chamberlain plus a bunch of amazing Brazilians in particular Andre de Santana, on bass. The songs range from completely acoustic to studio produced but all seem to sit in the strongest belief I hold true, that love is not a cliché but actually the most radical and potent untapped solution, and should be applied now in all directions before we no longer have a choice.