Jools Holland gig caps Reid’s big year
This year has been a breakthrough one for Dunedin-based musician Nadia Reid, discovers Jack van Beynen.
Kiwi singer-songwriter Nadia Reid performed her song Richard on Later ... with Jools Holland in September. It was kind of a big deal. The BBC television show is a UK cultural institution. Lorde was on earlier this year, and the show hosted the likes of Liam Gallagher, The National, Robert Plant and Morrissey in the weeks around Reid’s appearance.
Reid’s Jools Holland performance capped off a tremendous year for the singersongwriter from Dunedin.
She quit her day job in November last year to focus on music. Since then, she’s released her second album, Preservation (to very positive reviews), done three European tours, and been nominated for a Silver Scroll and three Tuis.
‘‘Music is my life at the moment,’’ Reid says on a Skype call from Italy, where she’s having some downtime.
‘‘I’m just so content doing this. It’s not easy, and it’s not like I love it every day, but the idea of doing this for a good while is quite comforting to me.’’
The Jools Holland performance capped a two-and-a-half month European tour. Reid says it was a ‘‘nice way to finish’’, although she didn’t enjoy it at the time.
‘‘It was a mixture of sort of elation and kind of terror, I really didn’t enjoy any of it until it was kind of over, and then it was this huge high and a really great response. Just to think about the people who have been on this show is just stupid.’’
Unfortunately, Reid’s appearance clashed with the Silver Scrolls awards ceremony in her hometown. She was one of five female nominees for the award, won by Lorde.
It’s easy to measure success by awards nominations and highprofile gigs, but that’s not what motivates Reid.
‘‘These things like Jools Holland or the Silver Scroll, it’s a nice feeling but it’s fleeting, you know? It’s not what sustains me,’’ she says.
‘‘What sustains me is meeting a stranger halfway across the world that’s come up to you after a show and said your song has really helped them make a difficult decision this week, or they’ve said ‘I was in tears’, or ‘Your record has helped me through my breakup’. That’s the kind of thing that sustains me, it’s not these kind of public award things, even though they feel nice.’’
Reid’s European tours have provided plenty of opportunity for these sustaining encounters. She and guitarist Sam Taylor had to cram in as many shows as possible for the tour to be financially sustainable. They played Mondays and Tuesdays and didn’t have many rest days.
‘‘Touring over here is so good for me as an artist,’’ Reid says.
You might expect the writer of such introspective and personal songs to favour the recording side of being a working musician, but Reid is just as keen on playing live.
‘‘I see them both as equally important, equally challenging, equally enjoyable,’’ she says.
"You also have to play to people because it's the whole point ... If there's no one else, you're just this kind of neurotic songwriter."
Nadia Reid
‘‘You also have to play to people because it’s the whole point, you know? If there’s no one else, you’re just this kind of neurotic songwriter. It’s all in your own head. To play live is an honour, and I do love it. When all the ingredients are right, I just love it, I absolutely love it.’’
Her latest Europe tour, however, pushed her limits.
‘‘You really have to kind of dig deep in a way that you don’t really have to in New Zealand. I’m not really sure why that is. But I think playing 34 shows in a row, and some of those shows, you don’t always want to do it, so you come back feeling kind of tour fit, musically fit,’’ Reid says.
Reid should be in top form, then, when she returns to her homeland for a three-date tour to belatedly celebrate the release of a music video for her song Preservation. She is set to play shows in Wellington, Canterbury and Dunedin.
Reid began playing music in Christchurch bars after she left high school and has built up a dedicated group of followers in New Zealand. Her upcoming shows, she says, are for them.
‘‘These shows are sort of a chance for our fans to come and celebrate the year that we’ve had. It really is to just touch base with those people that are kind of following my career.’’
This might also be her last chance to play small-scale shows. If Reid’s star continues to rise, small venues with cheap tickets might become a thing of the past. She doesn’t want to price people out of seeing her play, but she does want to broaden her audience.
‘‘For me, if it’s not feeling like it’s growing, or I’m not reaching a wider audience, if I’m not growing, then I don’t think it’s really a sustainable career,’’ she says.
‘‘I think even now I’m kind of one foot in the door and sort of ready to be like, ‘Oh, OK‘. I’m doing my best at the moment to kind of jump in, but always in the back of my mind I’m like, ‘If this starts feeling too hard or if this doesn’t feel right, then I’m out’.
‘‘I started playing music when I left school because it was a thing that sort of felt effortless to me. In the very beginning, it was a way to pay rent.
‘‘You know, I’d get $100 playing at a bar in Christchurch, and it just kind of kept going and going and going, but it was never like a mad dream or anything. It was something that I knew that I could do. It was easy and I could get paid to do it, I could pay the bills.
‘‘Now it feels a little bit more like a kind of – not a calling, but kind of – I kind of have a responsibility now, you know?’’
❚ Nadia Reid plays Wellington’s San Fran on October 27, Black Estate winery in North Canterbury on October 28 and Dunedin’s PLATO on October
29.