Nicole Collins July 5, 2008

Maybe you heard her and the band rocking Greenwich Village. Or you wandered into a Brooklyn caf to find her enchanting the crowd with just voice and guitar. Or lush vocals and clever lyrics on the airwaves gripped you: "Who is that?" Who, indeed. If there were a simple answer, singer/songwriter Nicole Collins an anti-clich mlange of rock/pop, soul and folk might not be the fount of raw introspection she is. "Its true, I helped you build this pedestal Im stranded on," she declares in her fiery anthem "Just Listen." "And its true, my calls for help wore the veil of nonchalance ..." Needless to say, hers is no simple story. It begins with impromptu renditions of Top 40 hits as soon as she could speak. While strangers were amused and impressed by her spot-on delivery, her parents learned that kids also sing the darnedest things: "Spank me, whoop me, let me come back home," la Ray Parker Jr., for example. By age 10, she was making waves in talent shows, musicals and choirs and training as a violist. The love affair was crystallized in high school, as she traveled the nation as an actress and songstress in the play "Carved in Stone," discovering the power of her voice on the masses. She began early in the craft of songwriting, too, tackling everything from love to lifes trials, which she already knew well: Raised in a military family on the move and attending 11 schools as a child Nicole learned the hard way that stability was fleeting, and trust too expensive. In writing she explored these themes, finding solace, even if answers were few. Nicole followed her dream to New York, where she quickly found her niche ("pop/rock with soul," she calls it) and released her self-produced debut, "Leave It Behind," in 2004. Since then, shes left her mark on stages from the New York area The Bitter End, Rockwood Music Hall and Central Park among them to the South and Midwest and beyond. Along the way, shes taken tunes to the national airwaves, Internet radio, and TV. Since 2006, shes been taking Europe by storm, traveling to Germany, France, Spain, and Denmark, where she performed at Tivoli Gardens (capacity 3000+). NC also released her new album, "Not This Time," in 2006, rising to the next level with polished arrangements to set off her stunning voice and intensely personal lyrics: "The sun has come out again, Im learning to laugh again, and everyones stopped asking if Im all right," she grieves in a soul-baring ballad. "... So its not a lie to say Im doing fine."

Event submitted by Eventful.com on behalf of MochaMayas.