Featured Artist - Suzi Nelson

[The following is a four part article published online on TriadLiveMusic.com between March 2 and 25, 2011] 

• Vocalist
• Genre(s) - Rock, R&B, Blues, Originals (Ethereal)
• Groups - Shaken Not Stirred, 1994
     The Thrill, 2004-2005
     Ethereal, 2005-2006
     Ethereal, 2009-Present
     Children of Karma, 2009-2012
     Heart Brigade, 2013-Present
• Bookings - suzinelson72@yahoo.com
• Facebook - Suzi Nelson


Part I
      On a wet rainy night in February I met up with Suzi Nelson, lead singer for Children of Karma, at the home she shares with her son, Phoenix, her boyfriend Brian Meyer, and Dempsey and Sasha, her two Boxer's. Downstairs the studio area of the basement plays host to her bands' practices as well as the extravagant parties she and Brian throw for music friends and fans.

Infant Suzi with her parents in 1972

      On the first Friday of July back in 1972, the 7th to be exact, a U.S. Navy enlisted man and his wife welcomed a future rocker chick into the world in Oakland, California. The young family soon found themselves in Washington state for a short stint before moving on to New York, her parents home. In June of 1980, Suzi and her family moved to North Carolina to help with her grandfather when he fell ill. For the next few years the cute wide-eyed little girl attended middle school in Randleman and then a christian school in Thomasville, but her senior year she moved back to New York with her father where she graduated high school.

A young Suzi dreaming of singing
rock and roll.

      After graduation Suzi stayed in the north finding a job and working. "I was at a crossroads," Suzi says, "I felt like I was stuck, there was nothing for me up there." Suzi entertained the idea of following in her father's footsteps and going into the Navy. Her choices seemed limited to her. "I was either going to go into the military or move back to North Carolina," she explains. "So I  took the ASVAB test." Laughing she recalls that "if I was going to do it I was going to do something that sounded interesting like fly airplanes or something, instead I qualified to be in the Army!"
      Suzi's musical ambitions were conceived during a trip to Darien Lake (an amusement park) in New York with a friend after graduation. "They had a karaoke recording booth there," Suzi recalls, "when you're done recording they'll give you a cassette but they play it outside so people can hear it." The songs she recorded that day were Heart's "These Dreams" and Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares to You." On the way hone their car broke down and Suzi had to call her dad to come pick them up. "We were all sitting in the car and I told him to put the tape in" she says, "so he put the tape in (not knowing it was her) and I asked him what do you think? He said 'What about it?' I said 'It's me!' Her father had to be convinced, not realizing that she could sing so well.

All decked out for a night
out in 1993

      When they arrived home her father talked to her uncle, who Suzi calls an "amazing guitar player and singer," and played the tape for him. He later came back with the album Dreamboat Annie, by Heart and told her to take some time and learn the title song. "He said "the next time I come back I want you to sing it for me," so I said "okay" and took it upstairs and listened to it three or four times. I took it back downstairs and said okay, I'm ready." Suzi proceeded to sing the song to the amazement of her uncle.
"He (her uncle) was in a country band called Exit 10 and he had me come out and sing a couple songs with them." That was Suzi's first time in front of a crowd. "I was a wreck," she recalls with a laugh, "I know for a fact that I just stood in one spot and didn't move (while she sang). It took every  gut I had to get on stage in front of people... and sing."
    Eventually she calmed down and relaxed and with each subsequent time on stage it became easier, but regardless  of her nervousness, the "damage" had been done - she had been bit by that age-old bug to be a rock and roll star.

Part II

    As a young child, Suzi Nelson once told a friend that when she grew up she wanted to be a rock star. It took several years and a venture into an amusement park recording booth on a lark to record Heart's These Dreams to implant the seed of desire to begin bringing those childhood ambitions to life.
      Suzi first performed on stage with her uncle's country band Exit 10 singing Don't Go Out with Him a cover of the Tanya Tucker hit country song, then for several months she would join them on stage and sing a song or two whenever she went to see them perform.
  Feeling the urge to return to the south, Suzi eventually moved back to the Triad area. Getting a job at Polo/Ralph Lauren she soon hooked up with friends Kenny Kallam (currently the lead singer for Magazyne), Ginger Gail Loy and Brian Meyers. The year was 1992 and the friends frequented the Triad nightclub scene at places such as the Rittenhouse Club in Winston-Salem. It was during this time that Suzi began her "rock" music education, but it wasn't until she saw the Raleigh-based rock group Jam Pain Society that she gave serious consideration to pursuing a music career. "The real moment I decided to persue it (music career) was when I saw Jam Pain Society perform at Snookers in Raleigh back in 1993," says Suzi adding "I had never seen a bad-ass rocker chic (Leah Kirby) perform live before and it was that moment when the perverbial 'light' came down from the heavens and I said... I wanna be that cool!"

Suzi and Brian Meyer

     In 1994, Suzi joined her first band, Shaken Not Stirred, a top 40 show band that played local as well as regional shows. "I was the female singer," she recalls "we had a male singer and we also had another female singer who at one time sang with the Vandellas. She was the lead singer in the second set and I sang backup for her, and she could work a crowd... I loved how she could work it." While the band was okay Suzi looks on her time with that band fondly saying "it was good experience."
  When her time in Shaken Not Stirred ended Suzi turned her attention to her day job and for the next ten years relegated her singing aspirations to singing karaoke with her close friend Ginger. In 2004 after several years of frequently singing together the two decided to take their singing further. "Me and Ginger were talking and saying we should get in a band together," Suzi recalls, "she really likes the blues stuff and I like the rock, so we put an ad in the ESP (a now defunct local alternative paper)... and two guys out of Winston called." After meeting, the foursome became The Thrill and played out locally at venues like McPherson's in Jamestown for a while before eventually losing steam.
  While The Thrill only lasted about a year it served as the catalyst for another venture that would become very close to Suzi's heart. "Whenever we would take a break from our regular practice our guitar player Mark Beck would play around with some original things," Suzi says "we started saying we should sing something to that, so he brought in some words and we would sing it and Ginger and I would add in some harmonies and pretty soon we'd have a song."
  The steam eventually ran out of The Thrill but a new group was about to be born.

Part III
 The Thrill was nearing its end the two friends and guitarist Mark Beck had begun to write and create original songs together but separate and apart from The Thrill. Suzi comments that "whenever we would take a break from (the Thrill) our regular practice Mark would play the music and we'd sing." When the Thrill finally did come to an end the three performers decided they were going to start another band but this time with original music. "The music was so awesome," notes Suzi, "we felt we needed to do something with it." When exploring names for the band Suzi explains that "the songs we were coming up with just had this real mystical quality to it, and I said I don't know why this word keeps popping into my head but it's like 'misty' or 'ethereal' and we couldn't come up with anything better so Ethereal stuck."

Long time friends - Suzi and Ginger Gail Loy

   As the life of Suzi and Ginger's band
  The group was very prolific in their song writing. "There is literally about seventy songs that we came up with," Suzi says, "not all of them are finished, but we have a very good solid collection of songs."
  With the help of Kip Gaudette, a friend who at one time played with the group Staxx, the group worked up material for an album. "We picked our favorite nine songs and sent them to Kip" Suzi explains "we took our basement recordings and sent them one at a time through email to Kip, after a while he invited us to Florida (where Kip lives) to do recording." With that the group packed up and headed south. "I drove and Ginger was in the passenger seat," Suzi recalls laughing, "Mark was in the back with his electric guitar with a little amp plugged in (to a car power converter) and we jammed all the way to Florida!"

Suzi, who works by day as a graphic designer for
Wrangler is also an accomplished photograper.

Once in Florida Kip's "studio" consisted of cords running into the bathroom because "he's in an apartment and that's where the best acoustics were." The bathroom studio might have seemed crowded but with the aid of computer software Kip took the basic bathroom recordings and tweeked them. When the group returned home to the Triad they had a basic raw CD of the recordings but over the ensuing months Kip would work on the digital recordings and embellish them one at a time and send them back and forth to the trio until the song was finished. "Kip is such a friggin' genious," Suzi says, "it was like he got in my head and there it was!"
  The finished album has yet to be pressed, though Suzi plans to eventually get it published.
  Of Ethereal Suzi comments that "it's real sacred to me... it's the only thing that I've ever been a part of that I took part in creating... it was the collaboration of the three of us collaborating really well.
  As a musical entity Ethereal began basically as a songwriting project that initially lasted about a year and a half and only played out at a couple of shows during that time. But the project was never totally shelved and Suzi says the group has begun practicing again with plans to do occasional gigs.

Part IV

     With Ethereal Suzi enjoys the creative outlet the project affords her.
  With Ethereal on the back-burner Suzi decided to put a profile up on the Musician Finder. "I had the itch to start playing out and initially I wanted to do originals a lot but the opportunity didn't present itself." After about six months Suzi had forgotten about the profile. "One day I got a message on Facebook," she says recalling the beginning of Children of Karma, "this person said Hi, my name is George and I saw your profile and I wanted to see if you'd be interested in playing music."
  George was George Owen and at the time he was living out of state and looking to move back to the Triad.

As it turned out Suzi realized she had seen George play years before when he had played at the Red Oak. In April of 2009 George moved back to the Triad and the pair started doing acoustic gigs to get comfortable with each other and make a little money.
  Coming up with a name for the fledgling group was a collaborative effort. "For some reason Karma kept coming up in my mind and I thought something with that would be a cool name and George suggested Children of Karma."
  Soon after the pair started they added on bassist Darrell Trogdon and continued doing their acoustic sets. With the addition of Danny Wagoner on drums the group was able to amp up and play full electric gigs. Suzi recalls that "Plum Krazy's July 2009 Summer Bash was our very first time playing out (electric) in front of anybody and it was just the four of us." The quartet continued on for a few months then "we began thinking it'd be cool to have another guitar player," Suzi says, "so George talked to Ken Boatman and we brought him in." Ken was a good fit, making Children a quintet.

Children of Karma

That lineup lasted until George left. To replace him the group decided to hold auditions from which Adam Anderson emerged as the newest member of the group. During late summer of 2010 Danny departed and was replaced with Mark Yarbrough who quickly got up to speed. With the addition of Mark it became evident that the skills and talent of the individual members compliment each other tremendously, making their performances smooth and tight.
  For Suzi, fronting a rock band is not only a dream come true and a passion, it is also an endeavor she takes very seriously. "I tend to not drink much (during shows)," Suzi explains, "I like to stay clear-headed when I'm on stage... but I have to make sure I'm relaxed and not too rigid on stage so I have learned that if I do a couple of shots before the show it chills me out and slows me down a little bit and I become more focused."
  While Children of Karma is Suzi's primary music focus she does have a musical bucket list of sorts. "I would love to sing, even if it was just a one time deal, I'd love to sing with Kenny Kallam (lead singer for Magazyne)" Suzi declares, "we've been friends for years and I think he is an amazing singer, he can wail on some heavy stuff and he's awesome at that too, but he's got a beautiful voice when you hear him sing pretty."

Another singer Suzi would like to get together and perform with is her boyfriend Brian Meyer. "We've talked about maybe doing Paradise By the Dashboard Light," she says with her eyes lighting up, "wouldn't that be fun! I think it would be awesome!"
  For Suzi Nelson, singing is a major part of her world... and the world is truly blessed for her singing.

ADDENDUM
    Since this piece was first published Suzi has dissolved Children of Karma and gone on to much bigger things. In addition to working on a complete Ethereal album she has joined the band Heart Brigade, a Heart tribute band and performing the songs of one of her idols - Ann Wilson. That move has elevated her career and taken her far and wide playing to much larger crowds.

-Charlton Wiggins-