Annie Nolan
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Annie Nolan

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"Singer-Songwriter Debuts Online"

In starting her music career, Annie Nolan is taking herself straight to the people.

The Victoria singer-songwriter's debut video "Promise" premiered earlier this week online at YouTube, Facebook and MySpace - which features a 1940's-era setting with Nolan as a gorgeous lounge singer.

Nolan represents a new brand of musician, one who's decided to take alternative routes to get their music out to the general public.

Nolan said she feels as if she's a bit of an anomaly as the record label who signed her, Incredible Steps Records Inc., was started mainly to help her jump-start her own music career.

"It does seem like it's almost impossible," said Nolan when asked about musicians trying to get signed to major labels. "I met my producer in the restaurant where I work and he started a record label for me to be the first artist. So I can't stress enough how lucky I feel because I know how much a lot of people struggle."

Originally from London, Ontario, Nolan migrated west after visiting her brother while still in high school.

"What happened to me is what happens to everyone, which is basically the first time they come here they crave to come back," she said. "So as soon as I graduated from high school I moved out here."

"I fell in love with Victoria," she continued. "I probably would have had a little more reservations about it if I was a bit older. But I was 19 at the time and it didn't really effect me. It actually hit me a few years later and that's when I started to get really homesick."

Nolan now calls Victoria home officially, and said she's very happy to be a part of a local music scene that's both diverse and friendly.

"It's not very overwhelming here; I don't feel intimidated to go play live anywhere," she said. "It's very comfortable and it's very open and it's not very judgmental. And people here respond to live music and they respond to local artists and they really want to support us."

Nolan says she gets inspiration from a variety of musicians.

Her clear, booming voice rooted in a folksy background has tinges of everyone from Sarah Harmer and Sarah McLachlan to Janis Joplin and Tori Amos. But Nolan added she also derives influences from some male counterparts - Damien Rice, Martin Sexton and Gordon Downie of The Tragically Hip.

These influences in the singer-songwriter category also point out a potential hurdle for Nolan - one where it seems 'everyone and their dog' is a budding musician these days.

"Yeah definitely, because it's true they're sort of a dime a dozen these days. Everyone's a singer-songwriter it seems and it's hard because you do want people to hear you and you want people to react to what you're creating. But you have to get them to do that and when all people hear is: 'Yeah, she's a singer-songwriter with strong female vocals and emotionally-driven lyrics', well, you're going to say 'Well who isn't?'. So yeah, it is tough a bit."

Her debut CD, which will include "Promise", has yet to nail a title or release date, but Noland said she's more than willing to throw herself into the ever-growing "singer-songwriter" pool.

"The goal is really just to have a lot of people react to my music and be affected by it," she said. "And really be moved, especially by my lyrics, and the way that I'm naturally trying to channel the emotion through the lyrics and the vocals".

"Promise" by Annie Nolan is available online free of charge at http://www.incrediblesteps.com.
- Victoria News - article by Patrick Blennerhassett


Discography

Like New - December 2008

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Bio

When given occasion to say my name people seem to say the whole name, first and last, as if the one must naturally follow the other, Annienolan.

A friend I’d known for many years once told me, “Annienolan, if you ever wrote a song for me and played it for me in your back yard, I’d go out that night and do all the things I’ve always wanted to do but was afraid to.” First and last name, dinner and dessert.

I tell people I was born in London, Ontario but the diminutive berg of Belmont, is actually closer to the truth. Comparable in size to the room you are sitting in now reading this, it possessed the essential elements of all small towns worth their town square: a creepy looking church, a big field with a single willow tree in which to build forts, some sort of abandoned piece of farm equipment so rusty that you fear you’ll get “lock jaw” by touching it (although no one who is of the fort-building age truly knows what “lock-jaw” is), a creek with a hundred ghost stories surrounding it, and a 7-2-11 on the corner of Main St. Heck, it had a Main St., and meant it.

A child’s fantastical imagination at once companion and inspiration, I played alone. I explored places and investigated people as fast and as far as a banana seat can go, singing as loud as I could. It didn’t matter that people were out in their driveways washing their cars or having dinner on their patios. With the wind in my ears and my voice ringing loud, I sang about everything I saw and heard. Somehow the beauty of it all resounded through my whole body and shook my soul.

At the age of nineteen, to a soundtrack of The Tragically Hip and The Guess who, I followed a trail blazed by Simon Fraser and Wilfred Laurier before me, headed West and now call Victoria my home. It is here that I began performing, leading bands with original material and collaborating with producers and other musicians.

I write songs because explaining how I feel could never be enough. To be balanced is to know yourself so well that you have the tools to come back to earth when you are spun from your body by a feeling. I learned to utilize songwriting to label that beauty which outshines the ordinary and to create that balance.

www.annienolan.com