Nixon brings her songs about real people to K-Days
Mom and wife Andrea Nixon brings her lovely voice and ‘real person’ sensibility to K-Days
When it comes to taking leaps, Edmonton country-roots singer Andrea Nixon doesn’t hesitate — and it’s paying off.
With enviable vocal dynamism, she’s gone through both the Project Wild artist-development band camp and Canada’s Music Incubator program. She won a fan-voted, $10,000 Storyhive video prize to make You Didn’t Make Me — which was then nominated for an Edmonton Music Award, then picked up by Air Canada.
This Tuesday, she’s one of four artists playing the Alberta Music Showcase at K-Days on the North Stage at 8:30 p.m., a good chance to catch this performer who summons Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn in both voice and working class vibe.
“When you hear Coat of Many Colors,” Nixon explains, “that’s Dolly’s story. When you hear Coal Miner’s Daughter — I sing it every show — that’s her story.
“It’s like it’s the most uncool thing in the world to be is a mom and a wife, singing about that. But Loretta did it, about her husband’s infidelity, and that was OK — so maybe there’s a hope that it’s going to be OK in the marketplace to be a real person.”
Given this, there’s something enticingly confident about calling her album Diary of a Housewife. Modern country music’s hits, especially by the bros, repeatedly summon a number of checklist good-time identity signifiers — down by the river, the good stuff, tight jeans, a vehicle, a name-dropped Ryman legend — but Nixon’s lyrics summon a more realistic reality.
“We’re all not going out Friday night in a pickup truck,” she smiles. “When I was having my own kids and listening to the radio, I was like, ‘I don’t know man, I’m just not hearing it.’ I just can’t find those stories any more of Sunday afternoon and Tuesday night of real families, and marriage and divorce and loving and hating. For me that was such a lifesaver — and it wasn’t only country music, it was Jann Arden’s Unloved, all those songs that were my heart out loud.”
When she was a little girl, Nixon wrote poetry in a little room under the stairs, “kind of like Harry Potter,” she laughs. “When I had my own kids I thought, ‘I can just improvise melody, make these poems sing. I tried it and it worked.'
“Diary of a Housewife is just me speaking that truth as a 30-something-year-old woman. Really trying to figure out what I was doing, feeling totally lost as a mother.
“Where did that go, that little person under the stairs who needed that? But I’m trying to bring the title of housewife to a position of honour, because so many housewives have been muted.”
Nixon was also up for a Country Music Recording EMA this year, and was part of a Via Rail Artists On Board tour across the country. Regarding that work ethic and willingness to try anything, she’s honest about her motivation.
“I’ve got three kids and I’m a school teacher, so when I’m going away from that life —especially when I’m leaving my kids — my goal is to do this sustainably, so I have to learn what I’m doing. It can’t just be this novelty. I’m robbing my husband, my children, of my time — which they also deserve. I have a statute of limitations, which is now.”
Another motivator in Nixon’s life is the loss of her father when she was a little girl. “My dad was sick my whole childhood. It was emphysema, which is why Coal Miner’s Daughter really talked to me. He was terminally ill, so he wanted all the information in me as soon as possible. All the life lessons had to be taught when I was a child.
“Even though it was tragic, I had the best experience possible.”