When Canadian Country singer Lisa Nicole recorded her most recent single “Count on You,” the world was not yet in a pandemic, nor could she have imagined how much listeners would need the reassurance of someone they could count on.
When she spoke in a recent interview, it was a hot day in Nashville—and even hotter in British Columbia, where she makes her home—40 degrees Celsius, which computes to about 104 F. Unseasonably warm is an understatement.
Things are heating up for her in a positive way too. Lisa Nicole has released her latest single “Count on You, along with a music video with an acoustic video to follow. This is the third release from her upcoming album Where Wild Hearts Beat, with CCMA Award-winning producer Jeff Johnson. She co-wrote the song in 2018 with Dave Pahanish in Nashville where she spent several months songwriting and performing along Broadway.
Lisa Nicole was visiting Nashville in 2017 when she heard that Keith Urban was playing one of his infamous pop-up shows at 12th and Porter, publicized by word of mouth. She signed one of her own CDs for him while she waited in line. She called her mom and said, “Keith Urban is playing a show tonight, and I’m gonna sing with him. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
Handing Urban her CD, the singer-songwriter who hails from British Columbia introduced herself to the singer, who quipped, “I’ve barely met you and you’re tattooed on my arm. It’s crazy,” nodding to his wife Nicole Kidman in the audience. Lisa Nicole and Keith sang a duet of “We Were Us,” caught on video and shared on YouTube.
The trip was her impetus to move to Music City for spring and summer where she co-wrote “Count on You” in 2018 with Dave Pahanish, who also co-wrote one of Lisa’s favorite Keith Urban songs, “Without You.”
Before the pandemic struck, Lisa Nicole had released the first single for the next CD, “Wait on Me,” also written during her time in Nashville, and was ready to tour Canada.
She said, “We were on a huge publicity tour across Canada. I was on my way to the morning show in Toronto when my publicist called and said, ‘You’re gonna have to go home.’” She added that when she wrote “Count on You, a song about those important people in one’s life—whether it’s a spouse or friends or family–she certainly wasn’t anticipating COVID’s impact, but realizes, “When we had all these dark days we really needed someone to count on.”
She says she has been fortunate that her guitar player lives nearby in British Columbia during COVID. They have been able to write some together. She also did some solo writing but found that the timing worked out. She had just written the album and recorded it, so she was able to switch gears and work on album prep and marketing.She also feels fortunate that her small community was less touched by the pandemic than more populous areas of Canada.
The album title Where Wild Hearts Beat comes from a line of the lyrics from the next single expected from the new album “Gypsy Girl,” which will have a video featuring a pair of girls on a summer road trip. Another single released earlier from the project is “Do Your Thang,” a fun summer song she also wrote in Nashville with Phil Barton and Brian White.
Lisa Nicole says creating the videos is one of the aspects she especially enjoys; she gets involved in the budget, arranging actors and locations, as well as making sure everyone is taken care of on the day of the shoot.
Now that live music is on the comeback, she was looking forward to her first live show in eight months in nearby Nelson, B.C.
Lisa Nicole got her musical start in the same area of Canada. Her parents were her early influences and supporters.
“My parents always played country music in the truck, and CMT was always on TV,” she said. She got her first taste of live performance at a local bar/restaurant when she was nine. Then she started playing in local jams in her area, singing on stage in local bars and venues by the time she was fifteen.
Rather than pursuing a music career right out of high school, she went to Selkirk College and studied music, where she continued her vocal training. “I had a great vocal coach and was digging into harmonies and understanding music. It was good to be able to speak the language,” she added. In college she also studied piano.
A music career was always in her sights. “I never did have a Plan B,” she said. In 2015, she won first place in an artistic development project that sent her to Nashville on a songwriting trip, and she also won a ten-week program industry-immersive in Toronto that gave her different training from what she had learned in music school. She was able to network with industry people and began working with the record company Coalition Music in an ongoing relationship.
For now, Lisa Nicole is eager to get back on stage, performing live again, promoting her album Where Wild Hearts Beat, due for release August 13. With great co-writing relationships with Nashville songwriters, she looks forward to coming back to Music City soon to write and to perform.
Visit Lisa Nicole at www.lisanicolemusic.com or follow her on streaming and social media:
YouTube: @LisaNicoleMusic Spotify: smarturl.it/LisaNicoleSpotify
Facebook: @LisaNicoleMusic Instagram: @LisaNicoleMusic Twitter: @LisaNicoleMusic