NYCS Swag Spotlight Nate Botsford
Portland, Oregon singer-songwriter Nate Botsford is our Swag Spotlight this week celebrating the release of his brand new song “Tiny Little Voices”. Growing up he recalls that his grandparents were incredible musicians, played piano and sang. He started piano lessons when he was five years old and always had a sense of writing songs. He started picking on a guitar when he was thirteen, starting to write actual music and songs when he was in his senior year of high school.
He grew up in church, his parents raising him on gospel music but as he got older he was attracted to old school country like Johnny Cash, and George Strait. “I was always attracted to the songwriting, so I loved the artists that were becoming popular that were also songwriters like Thomas Rhett, Brett Young, Old Dominion,” Botsford explained. “I got into those artists that were doing what I am trying to do, writing their own stuff as opposed to just singing other people’s songs.”
He started performing outside of the church when he was a senior year in high school, playing parties. “I got such a high from performing and singing and it was hard to explain so I kind of knew that was what I wanted to do,” he tells us. His family didn’t exactly encourage him to pursue music full time so after high school, he became a swim instructor and a lifeguard but after seven years, he decided he wanted to be a musician, playing wherever he could.
He tells us that he is still developing his country sound, that for a while he was writing songs that fit more into the bluegrass or singer-songwriter lane. “I always wanted to write country but I hit a wall for a few years,” Botsford tells us. “I won a songwriting competition a few years ago, I was mentored and my mentor told me that I had to go country, so I went home from there and started writing as much as I could and tried to aim towards country.”
Although he travels to Nashville every few months to write and to network, Botsford is currently still based in Portland. He explains that he loves his hometown, he has an amazing group of guys as his band and he hopes to accomplish his career and create music without moving to Nashville.
His latest single “Tiny Little Voices” was a song he started four years ago and planned on it just being a song for him, he never expected anyone to hear it. “I hit this place where I realized, I allowed so many of the influences and the people in my life tell me that I shouldn’t do music, I couldn’t do music, I let that create this wall in front of me and kind of realized that the one thing keeping me from pursuing it was me and I needed to stop listening to those voices in my head so I sat down and was frustrated and wrote this song,” he explains. It’s an important message for hope during dark times. Botsford says now that the song is released, it’s like he is baring a bit of his soul and hoping that people like it.
He is looking ahead to the rest of this year, touring all over the place and opening for Chris Janson and LOCASH. He is also going to record a few more songs and hopefully release an album by the end of summer.
To keep up with Nate Botsford follow him on Instagram and Facebook.
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