Conversations with Natalie Joly

Today we’d like to introduce you to Natalie Joly. 

Hi Natalie, 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?
My story starts very early on. I grew up in a musical household, a little north of Boston. From a young age, being surrounded by instruments and my family’s passion for music, 

I naturally gravitated toward it. It’s hard to remember my life before I started playing. By the time I was 8 years old I had written my first song on guitar, which I actually just recently found the handwritten lyrics to, and from that point on my life has been pretty much all about music. 

And that’s the interesting thing about my story, from those early stages it’s always been about my original music. Even when I started gigging out at 14 years old, I was working on my first original “CD” which I recorded and produced in our home studio. By the time I was 15 this album was done and I started selling them out of a brown paper bag at school for $5 a piece. This is about when I started being asked to perform at local town events and festivals, and these original albums became an ongoing thing. I ended up releasing two more albums, one in 2013 and another in 2017, with the constant goal of improving both my songwriting and my production with every project. 

This focus on my original music continued into my 20s and began gaining more exposure with the growth of social media as a marketing tool. I was gigging out full-time and spending countless hours in the studio, which really gave me an invaluable education in production and engineering. But during this time, I also branched out and explored opportunities I had to travel and work with other people in the music industry both in Nashville and LA. I began releasing a series of singles in 2018 and in 2019 I was honored to win Song of the Year at the New England Music Awards, for my original song “You Oughta Know.” 

I couldn’t be more grateful for all of the opportunities I had back in Boston, and all of the incredible, talented people I’ve had the pleasure to work with along the way. The last few years have been focused on the continual growth of both the artistic and business sides of my music career, all leading up to my recent decision to relocate permanently to Nashville. Having experienced Nashville on several occasions, I knew it was the best place to keep moving forward in my career. All of that work back home honing my songwriting, recording, and performance skills has prepared me for this next stage. The enthusiasm here in Nashville for its vibrant original music scene is exactly where I want to be to really show what I can do. I couldn’t be more excited to finally be here and get started. 

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Being a musician, the road is never smooth. It’s an artistic endeavor, and finding the right way to share that part of your soul with the rest of the world is never an easy thing to do. But that’s what makes being a musician such a rewarding career because all of the struggle and difficulty is ultimately so worth it. When the countless recording takes and mixing adjustments finally come together, there’s no greater feeling than listening back and hearing your vision come to life. And then to take that song and perform it for a crowd and experience everyone else’s reaction to it is something that is really special. 

So that balance of the creative and the commercial sides is probably the most difficult part for me. As an artist, you always want to be in that creative state of mind, but you also want to be able to share that art with as many people as possible. So, putting your product into a marketable package can create a lot of pressure. Music production and video shoots are a lot of work and I truly love doing it, but then there’s content creation, release schedules, online promotion, email announcements, and so much more. So, I’m always trying to find the right balance of outsourcing the areas of the business that aren’t exactly my strong suit, while making sure everything remains true to who I am as an artist. That way I can spend my time focusing on the things that I really love to do and that bring me the most fulfillment. 

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
What I think makes my artistic process unique is my ability to bring to life both the composition and production aspects of my music, before beginning to work with a producer. This has been an ongoing process for me, evolving from a singer to a musician, to a songwriter, to a producer. At this point, I demo all my own live instrumentation, write and program drums and any additional MIDI parts, and edit and mix these demos myself. In my world, the writing goes beyond lyrics and melody, it includes all aspects of the arrangement and mix to achieve the vision I had when I initially wrote the song. 

This process has developed naturally from many years of working with musicians, producers, and bands who all valued writing and producing songs ourselves. This unique experience of learning how every aspect of a song gets created makes for an awesome working experience with other producers. At this point, I’d much rather leave the final engineering to the professionals, and knowing how to speak their language really helps everyone to be engaged in the creative process. But having the ability to sit down by myself and put an entire song together is truly the most fulfilling part of what I do. There is no better feeling than being able to turn what’s in my head into something I can listen back to and show other people. 

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
What I love most about Nashville is the support from the community. Both musicians and fans are so invested in the artistic creation going on around them. This is so unique to Nashville, and something I wish Boston and every other city had more of. Witnessing fans spend their time and money to discover artists and hear their original music is a new experience for me and is something I find awesome and empowering. 

What is there to dislike about Nashville? People may say that the music scene is “oversaturated” but I don’t see that as a bad thing. The musicians that come here from around the world are all drawn to Nashville for the right reasons, for their love of music and the opportunity to be heard. And all of this musical expression packed into one close-knit community creates a culture that is truly one of a kind. You always want to be where the opportunity is, and the competition for this opportunity just makes us all better as musicians and artists. 

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: http://www.nataliejoly.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nataliejoly/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NatalieJolyMusician
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/nataliejoly
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/nataliejoly

Image Credits
Gabby Baglieri
Brian Pitcher
Steve Labo