The Hour

Featuring on radio playlists around the UK with new single Second Time Around, rising Americana star Nell Bryden is currently touring the UK with Ben Taylor (James Taylor and Carly Simon’s son).

Described as “singing from the heart and shooting from the hip”, Nell was born and raised in a bohemian quarter of Brooklyn where her mother Jane was a classical soprano who sang at Carnegie Hall, with her father Lewis a renowned landscape painter whose works hang in some of America’s finest museums and galleries.

At only four weeks of age, her mother brought her on a concert tour of South America, planting the seed that has blossomed on new album What Does It Take?.

Neil admitted: “I always knew I would end up on stage. As a child I used to put on plays with my friends - back when I was seven I wrote and directed a version of The Little Shop Of Horrors.”

For ten years she studied the cello and dreamed of becoming an opera singer until the day she first heard Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. 

“And that was that. I was 15 and that was the first time I realised it’s more about your personality than your technical prowess,” Nell explained. “People fell in love with Janis because she gave it everything.”

Of her rootsy style, she’s unapologetic. “I don’t see myself as a heritage act,” stresses Nell, “but most of my influences are songs that come from an earlier era. I just feel they crafted songs so well then.”

Nell Bryden is currently supporting Ben Taylor on tour. She returns to Scotland on her own headline tour in November, playing at Glasgow’s Oran Mor on November 9. For more information, visit her website at http://www.nellbryden.com/.

See Nell Bryden give an exclusive interview to STV

See Nell perform Second Time Around.