I’ve always known a life that included music but I didn’t always know that ability in myself. I grew up with music as an experience. Layers of harmonies and chord progressions helped me feel things on a higher level and took me to a more involved sense of emotion. I wasn’t popular and had no outstanding talents throughout my childhood. I hated being the center of attention and often found myself there as a result of many moves and new neighborhoods. I felt very lost. My father moved to Nashville from Salem, Missouri when he was eighteen with a thousand dollars in his pocket. From a very young age I heard stories of him living off bologna and cool-aid chasing his dreams as a drummer. One Air force career and years later he was my everything and barely even had his kit out anymore. My mother on the other hand came from a very prestigious musical family. My grandfather is an incredible famous songwriter. Unfortunately that didn’t include an even close to happy childhood for my mother, and as a result, her musical talents never came into fruition or even got to poke their head out. Her anxieties and insecurities flooded my childhood and my own self image from I can’t even remember when. She split when I was eight and we’ve had an estranged relationship ever since. When I was fourteen I asked my dad for a guitar and got a very sweet laugh that missed even a hint of seriousness. I asked for that guitar over and over again for months before my dad said ok. We made an agreement. He would get me a guitar and pay for lessons as long as I practiced and enjoyed myself. That was it. But it was only the beginning.
Once I had picked up my $200 Yamaha beginner’s guitar I immediately had an awakening. I don’t know where it came from and still can’t take credit for it but it was the change I had been waiting for. I immediately felt I was good at something. I started writing songs and hearing out chords. Instead of my music lessons teaching me to find my way on the guitar, I found it myself. My lessons turned into sessions trying to name chords I had made up and make sense of the wonderful tunings I had found. In turn I started finding myself. I played shows all around town, mostly in coffee shops. At first I only had 4 songs, but I played those 4 songs with everything I had. By the time I was fifteen I was traveling to Atlanta for personal vocal and development lessons from one of the biggest names in music, Jan Smith. Jan introduced me to singing, the studio, and the cut-throat world of the music industry. I felt invigorated and loved what this incredible passion in myself had produced. Over the next year my dad and I would drive back and forth from Atlanta once a month soaking up whatever we could from Jan and vigorously applying it to our life in Nashville. Ultimately by the time I was seventeen I had performed for the Grammy Chapter in Atlanta and the NAMM show in Nashville. I had been on radio stations and TV. I was surrounded with more parts of the “music machine” than I knew what to do with. Things were looking good. I dropped out of high school. I was playing shows for thousands of people without a label behind me. I didn’t even have an album to sell. As accomplishments got bigger so did problems. My world according to music suddenly consisted of marketing strategies, overanalyzed outfits, complicated band situations, and was completely lacking any inspiration. The team around me started to disagree amongst themselves and the criticism of the music industry took its toll on me. And then IT happened. I don’t know exactly what to call IT or how to classify it. I guess I can only say that I suddenly felt more lost than when I started and the thought of any sort of musical accomplishment coming from me seemed unobtainable and hopeless. I was drained and depressed. One day I was at a local mall in a store call Wet Seal and I observed the girls working their simple minimum wage job. I inquired about employment and they hired me on the spot. That moment started my “Break”
I immediately poured my heart and soul into my retail job and was promoted to manager within two months. I started living a life where I had no certain schedule and the more I worked the better I felt about myself. I put everything I had left into the black hole of dead-end job living. You know… paycheck to paycheck. My only “friends” were the people I worked with and I quickly lost touch with anyone from my former life. Why? I was embarrassed. I felt ashamed that only a short time ago, I had so many things going for me and now I was settling to have a management code and pair of keys. I had a hard time fooling myself. People would recognize me and would stop to talk. I would commonly hear “Why don’t you get back into music?” “Where have you been?” “What’s going on? Are you Ok?” “ When is your next show?“ and I would smile and say “Yeah! I’m great. I’m just taking a break.” I was really running in circles from myself. I eventually moved up the retail chain to a more popular brand. Guess. Oh and did I love Guess. To me Guess was retail but not really. I could get by saying to myself that Guess was a step above and that things weren’t all that bad. All the while I had already had two unhappy home situations that caused me to move unexpectedly and stressfully, and I had started binging on sex appeal and the makeshift Nissi I had found that everyone liked. I had no backbone, and no energy left to try to figure out where I had left it. I made another major career move. I went to go help open up a restaurant.
I kept telling myself that this time I was going to be able to get back up. This time I was going to show everyone that I was not a has been and that I still had it in me. I was so used to laying stagnant that moving forward even the tiniest bit was refreshing. But moving towards the thought of a new life was as far as I got. A couple of months into my job I had found someone who made me feel grounded and I shifted my pouring pattern from work into him. We decided to get married and shortly after that I found out I was pregnant. Life happens and things change. I didn’t get married. I didn’t have a baby. I didn’t have ANYTHING left. Everything up until this point had been the descent. This was my lowest low. I started to hate myself. I had gotten so far from where I wanted to be that I wanted to lay down and die. I left the restaurant and took a serving job.
Now I was 21, about 170lbs, and so depressed it was hard to convince myself to get up and shower. I went from running from myself to drowning in the shadow I had placed over my life. I would work my serving job, eat one meal, watch a couple of episodes of Law and Order, and go to bed early. I slept an average of twelve hours a night. One day at the end of the longest summer of my life I was sitting on the porch with my dad and again we made an agreement. I had six months of unlimited musical funds. If I made enough progress through those six months then we would talk again. It wasn’t the awakening I had had before, but it was a desperately needed carrot dangling in front of my face. I started crawling forward. A recording of a song here, ten pounds lost there, and dare I say even a show or two. My recovery grew exponentially.
The beginning of this year marked the end of that six months. Dad and I adjusted the agreement that as long as I am making progress and am happy I have as much financial support as I need. So I’ve started to build again. It is the month of May and I have played 6 or 7 shows, I am the most confident about my self-image I’ve ever been, and most importantly I have started to find my passion for my ability for music again. I am still in what I like to call “Creative Recovery” but I am loving it. You are pretty much witnessing it. I don’t write perfect songs or give perfect performances. I don’t have a perfect body and I can’t shred like Slash. I am not a computer whiz and I don’t know how to do professional graphic designs for my web pages. I do have a love for art that I want to immerse my life in. I have strong desire to make music that changes people and in turn changes me. I want a life full of the freedom to succeed against any and all odds. And finally…. I’m not running from myself anymore. I am Nissi Lee.
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