Bluegrass Reunion Ft. Alicia Blue with Adrea Castiano and Cole Gallagher
City Winery Nashville Presents Bluegrass Reunion feat. Alicia Blue with Adrea Castiano and Cole Gallagher on July 23rd at 7:00pm.
Includes Q&A with Gallagher Guitars.
Born and raised in the last eastern town of LA County, just steps from the San Bernardino border, Alicia Blue is no stranger to life on the fringe of whatever side, border or ideology, there is. The Pomona Valley, with its wide open spaces and desolate landscapes, were often accompanied by desolate outlooks and perspectives by Blue. The word “desolate” always seems to come to mind for her when recalling her childhood, despite her insistence that she is also a “closeted optimist.”
Her father drove semi long hauls for work and rebuilt classic Ford Mustang’s on the weekend to keep himself busy, while her mother took care of the house and kids while working five days a week as a bank teller. Arts were not a prominent thing in this working class home. So, it wasn’t until after her parents divorced and her uncle came to babysit that she got her first exposure. He handed a then 12 year old Alicia Bob Dylan’s Desire and said, “This is one of the greats. You should listen.” She sat for hours staring at the cover photo of Dylan in the Western fedora and neck scarf while listening to “Hurricane” and “Isis” over and over before moving on to the rest of the album. This went on for days. It was like nothing she’d ever heard before. It didn’t feel like the music she and her friends danced to and it struck her deeply. Something awakened in her and she started thinking differently. It was then that the first inklings of an artist began to emerge.
It started with little poems on little note pads because they’d fit easily into her pocket. Each day she’d come home from school to whatever album she was obsessed with at the moment. They were like her after-school snacks. Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks and Jewel’s Pieces Of You were on auto-repeat. The albums’ lyrics pages fed her obsession with words and were among young Alicia’s most prized possessions. She’d listen and read and then write in her little note pads for hours. This continued until her sophomore year, when she met an English teacher who introduced a “Dead Poets Society-like” classroom experience that changed everything for her.
Still having never owned or touched an instrument, nor even having considered opening her mouth to sing, this teacher stoked the fire of everything poetic inside Alicia. He suggested reading Kerouac’s On The Road and the poems of Allen Ginsburg, which made her consider the depth of how far words could go. She knew she needed new experiences and inspirations and moved alone to Los Angeles after high school. It was like moving to another planet for her and her family didn’t understand why she would want to leave. Without their support, both emotionally and financially, she knew she’d need to figure out how to survive in a city like Los Angeles. For a place so close to her hometown, it was an entirely different experience for her. She wanted to write and knew she needed more, so the experience was met boldly.
Working multiple jobs to pay rent while going to college full time, Alicia nearly burned herself out and one day ripped off her apron in the middle of a market shift for a job she hated and quit loudly. On the way out the door, a regular customer asked her if she needed a new job and she replied, “Yeah, I guess I do.” It was then that she was introduced to aging soul singer Malcolm Hayes Jr. The job was helping to take care of Malcolm and clean up around his apartment. Malcolm had suffered a drug-related stroke over three decades earlier and was in a wheelchair living in Section 8 housing. His apartment was in Thai Town above the music venue Harvard and Stone. One day, while cleaning Hayes’ place, Alicia discovered old vinyl LP’s and cassettes bearing his name and likeness. That’s how she first discovered who he was. Turns out he’d been a recording artist back in his day, had been produced by a young Barry White, and even toured with Little Richard when Jimi Hendrix was on guitar.
Alicia had a million questions for Malcolm and began going over there just to talk. His speech was impaired from decades of stroke, but she learned to understand him clearly. Something about these conversations excited her and she began to wonder whether the “thing” she was looking for all along was music as the means to reach people with her words. It was then that she made the decision to become a singer-songwriter. The only problem was that she’d never sung, written a song or played any instrument before. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her. With no money or musical knowledge, she asked Hayes’ to teach her everything he knew about music, and he was happy to oblige and take on some new purpose. She’d sleep on the floor of his weary apartment, sometimes days in a row, to absorb it all. Malcolm encouraged her to take music classes in college to learn as much as possible. She met a Thai musician named Nong playing at a Thai restaurant just steps from Malcolm’s apartment who barely spoke English, but finger-picked and sang classic Laurel Canyon songs like a pro. Nong helped Alicia buy her first guitar and taught her some chords to get her started. During this entire period, Alicia practiced guitar and singing relentlessly while finishing college. She even started performing with Nong at the Thai restaurant, sometimes singing in Thai (which she learned phonetically on YouTube).
In 2015, Alicia Blue did her first open mic and introduced some of her earliest, now mostly forgotten, songs. That was the year Malcolm died. He got to see her play only one time before he passed. It seemed to her as though he’d stuck around just long enough to set her on her path.
Alicia began busking around town, at places like Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade, and attending every open mic she could find. She played SoFar Sounds shows and opened for anyone she could. One of her first recorded songs from that period, “Magma,” was featured by Starbucks in their stores worldwide and on their Spotify playlist and brought her a good amount of attention. By 2020, Alicia had established herself in the LA music scene as a true poet / songwriter and, despite the beginnings of a global pandemic, was able to secure a meeting with a potential manager after a few weeks of back and forth emails sending old and new songs. She’d recently moved to her grandmother’s house in Pomona to save money to record and had been writing and playing every day. With her guitar in the trunk of her car, she made the two hour trek to meet him at a Westside Mexican restaurant that had outside-masked service. After a drink and a chat, and because there were no live shows to play in 2020, Alicia Blue asked if he would come see her play a few songs in the parking lot behind the restaurant. It was that meeting, and that private parking lot concert, that led her new manager to set up some high-profile writing sessions, introduce her to some industry folks and suggest she head to Nashville for a while to work with writers there. Her time there led to a deeply creative period in which she began to collaborate with great artists like John Paul White (Civil Wars), Sadler Vaden (Jason Isbell), Lera Lynn and Lincoln Parish (Cage the Elephant), setting the stage for what would become 2022’s release Inner Child Work, produced by Lincoln Parish and recorded in Nashville. She began introducing herself to the Nashville scene by playing the legendary New Faces night at The Basement, and toured and played shows with The Districts and The Secret Sisters.
By the end of 2021, Alicia Blue had fallen for Nashville, packed up her life and moved there in the spring of 2022. That winter, Alicia was named one of American Songwriter’s 16 Artists to Watch in 2023. She began performing at many of Nashville’s staple venues that all pivotal songwriters pass through and did her first AmericanaFest. She played shows with various well-known local players, and a lot of solo ones. She was featured on high-profile tributes at the Basement East, like the Lucinda Williams’ 25th Anniversary Tribute to Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, she sang and played Joni Mitchell’s “Coyote” at the sold out Last Waltz tribute, and even covered “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” with the band and her guitar at the Pearl Jam tribute, all of these helping to earn her stripes with the community of Nashville’s best musicians.
In summer 2023, Alicia started recording a new batch of songs she’d been working on, this time with producer Dan Knobler (Allison Russell, Lake Street Dive, Rodney Crowell) and some remarkable local musicians who helped create the sound she was hearing in her head. She was fortunate enough to write “We Are So October” with the great Butch Walker after he’d read her poem of the same name, and then even joined her for a duet on another track on the album called “Tags.” She met Americana icon, poet and singer Lucinda Williams and sang some songs for her at a party, which led to Lucinda agreeing to feature on her new song “Tennessee” (which also features John Paul White of the Civil Wars). That meeting led to a growing friendship between the two with many late night talks about literature and poetry, and even Alicia being honored with the opportunity to go out and support her on tour.
With a newly finished album and a growing presence on the Nashville scene, Alicia Blue is moving forward in 2024 with the release of her new album, Tags, and its first single, “John Wayne,” hitting on June 6.
