Nell Bryden

American singer/songwriter Nell Bryden fuses bluegrass, jazz, and country into a style she calls modern Dixie, earning positive notice for echoing the bolder recent work of Norah Jones. She entered the world in Brooklyn in 1979, the daughter of a classical soprano and an artist father, and spent her early years immersed in an artistic household. By age seven she had already begun writing and staging her own plays. Ten years of cello study fueled her childhood ambition to follow in the footsteps of Maria Callas, yet exposure to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin at fifteen prompted a sharp pivot toward popular music. During a gap year spent in Australia she picked up the guitar and started composing her own material. In 2003 she cut her debut album, Day for Night, in Nashville alongside film and television composer Fred Mollin. Work on the follow-up project in New Orleans halted midway when funds dried up, until the chance discovery of a missing Milton Avery canvas in her father’s studio supplied the resources needed to finish the record with Grammy-winning producer David Kershenbaum, whose past clients include Duran Duran and Bryan Adams. Legendary Radio 2 presenter Bob Harris lent early support, and the resulting album, What Does It Take?, appeared on Cooking Vinyl in 2009. Since then Bryden has opened for KT Tunstall and Counting Crows, performed for U.S. troops in Iraq, and featured in the documentary Striking a Chord.