Nina Yates is a Portland, Oregon based singer songwriter who pulls you into her stories with thoughtful and distinctive songs. A slow, tender and delicate drag, yet fierce with lived emotion, the wisdom of a mother, the comfort of a sister and the heartbreak of a daughter.
It didn’t occur to Yates to start writing songs until the day she first met her mother, when she was twenty-three years old. Since then she has been using songwriting to redeem hard times by turning them into beautiful artifacts.
Mama’s Heart, Yates debut LP, features ten beautifully crafted folk songs, of which eight were written for a weekly open mic song prompt hosted by Taylor Kingman (of TK & The Holy Know-Nothings) at the Laurelthirst Public House in Portland.
As someone who has always been drawn to the sound of something older, folky and rural, Nina feels that songwriting is about connection and community.
The two remaining songs on ‘Mama’s Heart’ were collaborations with legendary Portland based producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Mike Coykendall. Last year Coykendall generously offered his old songwriting notebooks and tapes to members of his songwriting community to salvage and recycle aspects and parts of songs to build new, finished songs. A project called Coykendall called ‘Seeds and Stems’.
For lovers of songcraft, Nina Yates delivers a dose of much needed medicine on her debut record. Heartfelt and true, Nina’s voice and songs are genuine and unique, yet evocative of important songwriting heroes like Joni Mitchell and Gillian Welch.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the video for “Just A Girl,” a song that finds Yates mining what it means to be a woman through the ages. In a similar alt-country folk vein as artists like Brandi Carlile, Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris, Yates sings with a voice that is at once haunting, lonesome and beautiful. Backed by an ominous, thumping beat, Yates lets the harmonies shine as she sings about moonshining. The song veers down a darker, country-rock path with twangy guitar and a sparse, percussive groove. Simply put, this is a song about one badass woman (or girl), and Yates injects it with a healthy dose of soul and depth.
Yates describes the inspiration behind the song:
“During the American Prohibition of the 1920’s women were protected from prosecution for making or being in possession of alcohol. Ladies were not perceived as capable or depraved enough to be moonshiners. This created the perfect opportunity for enterprising and for clever gals to thrive as bootleggers. I love this. I love the woman in this song who alternates between her roles as a savvy huckster, naive innocent, devoted mother and lover, expert craftswoman, and astute law dodger. Whatever was needed to support her family. Even in 2020 I still often feel both vulnerable and dodgy about thriving as a capable woman…like I’m breaking the law. This song is also a shout out to Gwen Stefani…Just Another underestimated, badass Girl.”
WATCH:
Preorder the album at – https://ninayates.bandcamp.com
Photo credit: Emma Allen
