Sheila Nicholls

Sheila blocks out most of her childhood. She grew up in Colchester, Essex, England, a town fifty two miles east north east of London where her two brothers still live and her mum runs a pub.

She’s been writing songs since she was 14 but didn’t really talk about it till she was 24 when she was living in New York and formed a band called “Sheila Nicholls and the Splendid Frock,” because it was better than being a nanny. Returning to LA in 97 to record some songs, she has also been organizing and hosting “Chicks In Arms” to promote community of diversity among women performers in Los Angeles. It’s a bit like Lilith ‘cept boys can play if they wear a dress. Sheila runs her own label, Essexgirl Records, on which her debut album “Brief Strop” will be released in November.

In Sheila’s words, a closer look into “Brief Strop:”

This record spans some time, not only in it’s making but in its composition. The oldest song is “Fallen For You” which I wrote in 1992 having returned to LA from my first ever visit to NY. It was also my first autumn in three years and you know how central park trees can rock your world at that time of year. Well it was here I found myself pining the fjords if yer na wot I’m saying.

Have you ever been so into someone that you’re embarrassed, because of who you become when you think about them, then when you get near them you just bumble and stumble around? I wanted this person so much but I wouldn’t pursue them as I was afraid of tripping myself and making myself look like a wanker. Then there’s always the fear of rejection thing. So I just sat and watched from a distance and tortured myself. But that pent up shit and consequent fantasy was an excellent muse. A year and a half later I moved to New York which yielded, “Hannah,” “Rapunzel,” “Question,” and a whole bunch of other stuff I may or may put on the next record.

I was living on the seventeenth floor in the maid’s quarters at the back of an apartment in a large building opposite the park. I was a Nanny. I had a small window that looked all the way over the Hudson and into New Jersey. One rainy night my reflection in the window became me looking back at myself sitting cross-legged on the bed. I was disappointed with myself. I felt like I was on the precipice of permanent distraction. You know, when you put your dreams and desires on hold for sufficiently long enough you eventually forget what they were. I knew I wasn’t doing what I wanted and was hiding myself away. “Rapunzel” was a kind of a plea to myself to change my circumstances. The “bleeding key” in the bridge is a reference in a story called Bluebeard, in the book Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It is a tale in part about how once you see through an illusion and know something different to be true that action can be taken swiftly to realign yourself with the bigger picture.

“Hannah” is a true story. My ex was in a theatre company, and one night a group of us went drinking in the east village. This one particularly flamboyant and vibrant woman who I loved being with, insisted on being wooed that night, but that’s trivializing the situation. The point is she believed him, we all want to believe and not keep having to be suspicious. It’s just when guys will say anything to get laid and manipulate at the expense of a sista. It kinda hit a chord.

All of my songs seem to arrive when I need to get a better view of myself and my environment, just extensions of my diary and for a long time completely private. I am my own shrink. They are usually a mirror of commentary on a situation, experience, desire or observation,that help me see the right choices to a resolution, or just help me see. Lately some of them have not been completely clear until much later, whereas in the past their intent has been, more often than not, immediately obvious. I have just forgotten songs when I felt like there was no need to play them anymore. Now that I play them for other people they get adopted and prolonged which is finebut different.

I have heard the word feminist more than once, an association I am proud of. I write songs about women because I am one and this is how I experience the world. The world is not yet equal. There are continuous presumptions, ceilings, definitions, and conditioned responses however subtle that perpetuate a “less than” state for many, not just women. So there in lies a motivation to create, and not be passive. One of the greatest luxuries I’ve had that my mother did not, is simply to have been able to define myself and my environment. If anyone thought my songs could help in the continuing struggle for women’s and anyone else’s equality, I would be quite delighted, although it has never been an objective.

I wrote Pan on this crazy out of tune elderly piano with missing keys in this old factory with dirt floors and pigeons in the rafters somewhere near Philadelphia. I really have no idea where I was but I was driving around and living in my bus at the time when I met a group of hippies living there. I remember some of the boys/men there who seemed to exude that innocent pre-conditioned maleness. Clean and loving, non-competitive, the kind you can get close to with no sexual innuendoes or hierarchy. They reminded me how much I love men and being close to them, when equality is presumed and doesn’t have to be fought for.