Meet Courtney Waldron

Today we’d like to introduce you to Courtney Waldron.  

Hi Courtney, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in Montana in a really rural place where there were basically only country and oldies stations, and I became really obsessed with country music. I knew from a pretty young age that I was meant to move to Nashville and make music. I ended up getting my degree in Music Industry, interning at a record label in Minneapolis, and then moving to Tennessee. When I got here, though, I was pretty scared and overwhelmed about what to do next. I was used to structure and of course, had student loans to pay, so I ended up taking a corporate gig. I worked in a cubicle for six years, getting more and more unhappy by the day, until I finally realized that I had to go back to making music. 

I dove back into just about every aspect of music. First, I started writing songs again, and then when I realized my songs were turning out really well (thanks to lots of new life experience!) I decided it was finally time to start trying to make a record. I started that process which led me back to my vocal coach, who I had worked with as a form of self-care during my time incorporate. In the midst of all of this, I also had a friend reach out to ask me to help her daughter prepare a few songs for a role she was playing in a musical. I actually ended up loving teaching and coaching so much that after the first few weeks I decided to not only go out and find some new clients but continue to educate myself on vocal pedagogy so I could be confident in the service I was offering. Among lots of other things, I spent a year training with my vocal coach and her business partner and built my business from there. My record is still a work in progress all these years later, but without deciding to start that process I wouldn’t have gotten to where I’m at with everything else. 

In the last year or so I’ve also started vocal producing some of my voice clients in the studio, which is turning out to be my favorite part of anything I’ve done so far. It combines a little bit of all the things I love about music, plus we get a shiny, amazing final product to show for all of our work. I love the collaborative aspect of making records and I love giving artists the gift of getting to be truly proud of their performances. 

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Most of my struggles have been internal. I had an intuition early on after I moved to Nashville that I should probably look into therapy or even life coaching to help me put one foot in front of the other, but finances were a huge issue at the time. After I left my corporate job, I saw a few therapists for different reasons over the years, and have done a lot of other self-healing with the help of tools like The Artist’s Way. My biggest lesson was that I didn’t need to be diagnosed with a mental illness to need help, nor did seeking help mean I had failed and wasn’t worthy of what I wanted. I wouldn’t say I’m all the way there yet, but when I look at my life and my business as opposed to 3 or 4 years ago, it’s amazing to see how far I’ve come. 

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
As an artist, I make country music. It has been my lifelong obsession, and someday I hope to have the time and money to just hang out in a studio with incredible musicians and put a whole record together. For now, I recently started learning to produce so I’m starting to make my own records, which is such a fulfilling challenge. I never learned to play guitar, so I’m really leaning into being a piano player and arranging really cool vocals to inform my style. 

As a vocal coach and vocal producer, I love to help artists do country, rock, pop, and Americana. I believe great vocal technique is the foundation for everything a singer needs from strength, agility, longevity, all the way to style and performance. I spent 10 years of vocal training being told not how to sing, but how I was supposed to sound. It was awful because I knew what I wanted to sing and that wasn’t it. So, I spend a lot of time listening to artists tell me what they want, listening to their vocal influences, and helping them figure out how to sound the way they want to sound – while developing anything that makes them truly unique – in a healthy, sustainable way. I also really love helping singers discover that style when they don’t quite know it themselves yet. 

Maybe the best part is helping singer/songwriters rediscover their own songs. I have noticed that a lot of songwriters write “filler” lyrics that sound cool or let the listener make an interpretation, but often the reason they do it is because they don’t know exactly what they feel or what they want to say in that moment of the song. Vague, poetic lyrics can work, but vague vocal performances don’t. So, I dig into those songs with them until they can connect to an emotional place and deliver a performance that everyone can feel. Vocal performances should always be interesting. You should never let anyone get bored listening to you. And feeling the emotional arc of the song as you sing is the one of the best ways to keep listeners engaged. 

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
It’s so hard to know. When I graduated from college, Spotify wasn’t even a thing yet. I was still clutching my CD collection for dear life, afraid that the digital albums I bought on iTunes would be gone every time I needed to buy a new computer. So much has changed since then, and I’m sure it will continue to in ways I can’t imagine. 

I do have hope for the vocal field outside of just the record industry. There are still so many of us out here working whose only access to vocal education was our hometown teachers who had gone through the Western Classical system. We were told singing any kind of popular music was going to ruin our voices because that’s what they’d been taught and honestly believed. Of course, that’s not actually true, if you have the right guidance. Now that you can get an entire education online, a lot of it for free, I think more traditional educational institutions are realizing they have to keep up. And that’s a good thing. Classical training isn’t going anywhere, there are still a lot of people who really love classical music and love the challenges it offers. But when we finally stop dumping contemporary voice students into classical programs and expecting them to just figure the rest out for themselves, I think that’s the dream. 

Pricing:

• Vocal Coaching – $360/month
• Single Pre-production (3 sessions) – $250
• Single Pre-production + Studio support – $500

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: courtneywaldron.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/courtney.waldron/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cwvoicetn

Image Credits
Michelle Fruland