Nicole Laurenne on The Darts, US Justice System, Rebellion, Sobriety & Self-Discovery // #062

heartdea13r Podcast w/ chr1stoph3r g0nda // Episode 62 // Nicole Laurenne (Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Judge, Founder of The Darts)

Episode Summary:

Nicole Laurenne shares her unique journey from a scientifically inclined family in Chicago to becoming a punk rock musician in Seattle. She discusses the cultural influences that shaped her musical identity, the struggle between her passion for music and her parents’ expectations, and her experiences as a judge in the legal system. Nicole reflects on the importance of empathy, the quest for authenticity, and the impact of COVID-19 on her self-discovery and musical freedom.

Nicole shares her journey of self-discovery, embracing change, and the challenges of balancing multiple roles as a musician, judge, and parent. She discusses the importance of gratitude and kindness in the music industry, the realities of touring, and the lessons learned from her unique experiences. Nicole emphasizes the significance of treating music as a business and the value of planning and adaptability in achieving success. Her insights into raising creative children and transitioning to a full-time music career provide valuable advice for aspiring artists.

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Full Episode Transcript:

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (00:00.157)
like half of these things before and it’s hard not to mimic questions over time as an interviewer or interviewee. There’s going to be redundancy but I still need like you know some of the salient details to put together the big picture. So you’re in Seattle now but you were born in Chicago and there was a stop in Arizona along the way.

So tell me about this journey. You were born in Chicago, musically inclined parents. How’d you choose Seattle?

Nicole (00:34.158)
No. My parents were not musically inclined. They were scientists, hardcore, did not listen to music, did not… I don’t know. It wasn’t part of their life. They were all very… My mom is from India and like you, we go back there a lot and there’s a strong connection there, but she immigrated to go to the University of Michigan to study physics and she was literally a rocket scientist.

even did a little stint at NASA and everything. So that’s my mom and my dad has a zillion patents himself. He was a chemical engineer and developed all the plastics that you use in bio biomedical uses. So when you go to the hospital, you’re using a lot of his products that he designed. So they were brilliant, freaking brilliant people, but music was not part of their world. And my brother’s even a doctor. So I’m very much the black sheep in the family.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:31.391)
That’s so, you know what, let me stop you there because it’s so funny already that not only are the black sheep, but you’ve got this Indian blood, Indian heritage, because I spoke last year with Biff Naked, also a queen from the punk rock scene who is the black sheep in her family and has Indian heritage. What are the odds? Are you guys twin sisters or?

Nicole (01:54.942)
No, but I think there’s a pretty strong, there’s a pretty good, there pretty good odds because I think the Indian culture on its face pushes this STEM stuff, know, science, technology, study engineering, be a doctor, because they’re so terrified that you’re going to be broke. I mean, my mom grew up with dirt floors riding an ox cart to school from her village. You know, she’s, there’s a terror there that is very real culturally, that they want you to be financially secure. And those are, that’s a great way to do it.

But underlying that culture is this rich tapestry of Indian folklore and beautiful music. And there’s a lot of parallels between Indian ragas and garage rock, believe it or not. Just as King Khan or any of these guys. Or Nightbeats, Danny from Nightbeats. There’s Indian heritage. You can hear it in the riffs.

So it’s just kind of dying to get out, but all of us are being pushed into these serious professions when that culture, that art, is so big a part of our DNA. So I think it makes perfect sense, actually.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (03:02.655)
That’s really cool. You know what’s funny is like I’ve never thought this but like I wonder what it is physiologically, mentally that pushes some of us to rebel and to seek that. Like you know I came from a great upbringing. Sounds like you you had a strong upbringing as well. What is it in our minds that pushed us outside of the sure we’re gonna do the corporate medical whatever thing and go into music or punk.

Nicole (03:32.75)
Well, I did both, I guess you could say, because I did the law thing very much under protest at first, but with my parents saying, there’s no way you can do music. What are you going to do with music? That’s ridiculous. If you’re going to go to college, study something real. so I did. I followed that path with a lot of, with my parents in mind. It was really them. If they had said, sure, do music, I would have done music. That’s it. It was one thing that sent me in that path.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (03:34.687)
Thank

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (03:59.539)
Yeah.

Nicole (04:02.44)
to answer your question, I think there’s… I don’t know. I don’t know what’s in the DNA, but I know that from the tiniest tiniest child when there was a toy, plankety piano in the back of our van, and we’d go on road trips and I’d crawl back there and play in this piano, I had to do it. It was like breathing. I was drawn to that more than I was drawn to anything else in my life. Still am. And so don’t know. I don’t know. There’s a…

The muse is real. She pulls you in and she does not let go. then that was very real.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (04:30.249)
Yeah, thanks.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (04:36.841)
So you grew up in this like, you know, house of intelligentsia and science and whatnot. When did you discover music and what was it? Cause I know that you’re classically trained and you like grew up with, you know, jazz and some other stuff, singing professionally or operatically, I think.

Nicole (04:55.15)
But yeah, I really started with this toy piano in the van, think. And just hearing… I don’t even know where it came from, honestly, but I think when I started playing that piano, my parents were like, oh, this will develop the brain. Let’s do some music lessons. And it was all very practical, brain development stuff, you know? And went to classical piano lessons like every little kid does.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (05:17.183)
Yeah.

Nicole (05:23.072)
and I had this most amazing piano teacher who would not only pile the Beethoven and the Bach and the cacciaturina onto me, but she always snuck a fun piece, a Japanese interpretation of Yesterday by the Beatles that was really, really huge on the piano, the way it was organized and arranged, but it was a pop song still. So was kind of… she encouraged me to think outside the box, and I was competing, I was doing all this stuff. My mom, who…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (05:36.691)
Yeah.

Nicole (05:50.254)
is not into music is very into competition. she definitely liked when I started bringing trophies home, she was like, oh, this is fun, you know, and so let’s do that. And she would drive me to the competitions and sit in the back and, you know, like it was like, it was very intense. But when it came time to actually go to college and study it for real, it was like, oh, that’s just a hobby. And that’s like a little sport you’re doing, you know, let’s focus on something. So I think…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (06:10.59)
Yeah.

Nicole (06:16.803)
It came, I don’t know where it came from, but I know that it started from the minute I put my hands on that toy piano. I can tell you that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (06:25.395)
It was just a vibe, it was a feeling. It sounds like your parents, in spite of maybe they’re wanting you to follow in different footsteps, were still encouraging of you having discovered the music.

Nicole (06:37.678)
to a point for sure. I mean, I wouldn’t have gotten here without their support, paying for all those piano lessons, and especially when I started getting really serious into the piano. There were master classes in downtown Chicago. There was a music camp, the international music camp I would go to every summer for three months.

And it was a very expensive and it was very intense and you can’t do that without your parents, you know help because it’s it’s pricey and it’s it’s a lot of time and effort and So yeah, they supported it, but they never ever Thought or wanted me to To follow it as a career that was unheard of that was not enough So yeah, the support went strongly, but only as a great hobby. That was where they wanted it to be in my life

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (07:15.828)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (07:26.067)
where did their support end and your passion or belief in yourself or tenacity begin?

Nicole (07:35.054)
It was in college when I hadn’t picked a major, think, yet, because I was fl- I got a partial scholarship for music, but we couldn’t follow through on it because my mom didn’t want me to do the music thing, and so the only other thing I liked was deviant psychology, because it was interesting and, I don’t know, gory and graphic. And so I…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (07:44.424)
and

Nicole (07:59.488)
I went into psychology and I was playing in the piccolo in the marching band and the Michigan marching band. I know a Canadian probably can’t totally relate to this, but we went to Toronto many times actually for exhibition games. The Michigan marching band was a big deal in the marching band world. It is the one you want to be in, especially in that day and age. It was very athletic. They did this very intense high stepping. I saw it on TV. My mom’s a big football fan and my parents both went to Michigan and I would watch this marching band on TV.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (08:08.428)
Ha

Nicole (08:28.206)
in the bowl games and they were just unanimous and the symbols were going everywhere and they were doing dances and the music was top-stellar incredible stuff and as a little kid I was like wow that’s larger than life and so when I went to school there I’m like I have to be in the Merchant Man and I piccolo growing up in the school I walked in with a Vivaldi concerto on piccolo instantly not first trick you know like and and was in the Merchant Man

And at one point my band director, who was a very high school in Michigan music professor said, you know, you should be doing music in college and not whatever else you’re doing. And I was so excited and called my mom and said, mom, my marching band professor thinks I should switch to a music major. And I’m really excited about this and this is what I wanted to do. And her response was, if you’re going to study music, I’m just going to pull you out of college. What’s the point? I’m like, ah, ah, ah, no. And so, uh.

I kept on going with her track, but I realized I had to do this somehow. So I got a job playing piano for opera students. Nobody realizes this, but opera students need a piano player in their lessons and in their rehearsals because there’s no music. There’s no singing. So they pay a piano player to come in and play at everything they need. So I got that job. Luckily I had the classical training, so that was not very difficult for me.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (09:38.429)
Hmm.

Nicole (09:55.182)
And I also started dabbling in these little bands that needed a keyboard player. I didn’t know anything about pop music. Some of them were playing covers, some weren’t. And then two marching band friends and I started a little band of our own and had me write songs. And we played at incredible events like the Flint, Michigan Festival of the Christmas Trees. you know, ridiculous things. It was nothing. But it definitely lit a spark.

and I bought this beautiful kawaii synthesizer and I was listening to a lot of Prince back then on the side and just kind of learning about pop and realizing that I wanted to perform this stuff somehow. I didn’t know how. So that was the track where it kind of went, you know, where like I have to this thing. I’ll keep going with this other thing, but I have to do this other thing in an underground way or I can’t survive.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (10:25.471)
Cool.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (10:43.359)
you

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (10:49.925)
Mm-hmm. That’s really cool. So you corrected me and I was wrong because I said operatic singing and obviously that wasn’t the case, but opera accompanist is what I had as my note. You’re classically trained, you’re doing stuff with a marching band, you’re getting into jazz and piano whatnot.

What was your musical trajectory? What were you listening to? Was there all of this stuff at the same time as Prince or did it start there and then the goth rock came afterwards?

Nicole (11:23.414)
It was a very slow progression. In fact, I just did a podcast yesterday about the records that influenced me throughout my life, and they said, what influenced you as a child? And I’m like, Mozart? And it’s really hard to think of that. yeah, I discovered Journey as a high school kid because there was a piano. And I realized the kids at school, I was a big band geek.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (11:49.503)
Yeah.

Nicole (11:52.646)
nerdy, no friends kind of kid and when you come to school and you start playing Don’t Stop Believing on the piano in the band room all of sudden you’re cool! And so I was like, I like this band! You know, and that was all I knew is that I could play it on the piano. And that progressed into a deep love for, and this is, you know, will time stamp me, but Sinead O’Connor. And then that led me to Prince because he wrote for her and…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (12:20.443)
I didn’t know that.

Nicole (12:21.498)
nothing compares to you that her big hit was written by Prince. Yeah, yeah. And so I got really into Prince and Purple Rain and that movie just blew me away and really left a stamp on performance. When I saw him perform in Purple Rain, the song of the beautiful ones, and he’s lying on the stage and he’s singing into Epelonia’s eyes and the crowd, and I’m like, my God, that’s what a performance is.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (12:25.011)
What? I didn’t know that. That’s crazy.

Nicole (12:48.198)
All I knew was these guys playing the piano in their tuxedos on stage. And to see that was mind-blowing. It altered the way I perform. And I think you can see some of that in the way I perform to this day. There’s a lot of theatrics. Maybe stolen some from Prince. And so, yeah, as I went forward…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (13:01.95)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (13:05.343)
Okay.

Nicole (13:09.75)
I went to law school, again under protest, and had very little time to do much music. So I realized that playing jazz was easier, took less time anyways, not easier, but it took less time, practice time than classical. So I started playing in a jazz combo and I started listening to a lot of old time jazz, Nina Simone and…

Just Bill Evans and Peggy Lee and all that because I needed to learn the songs for this jazz trio I didn’t know anything about jazz and we performed at all the resorts around Tucson when I was in law school and made a lot of money Playing play into these resorts these covers these jazz standards fell in love with those that obviously plays into what I’m doing now a lot so that’s why I bring it up and Then when I became a lawyer I had even less time so I started playing in a all lawyer rock and roll cover band

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (13:55.657)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole (14:02.222)
called Sidebar that played at the lawyers watering hole behind the courthouse on Thursday night. And it was always packed. And I learned all about rock because I had to learn all these cover songs. And so I learned how to play Warren Zevon. And I learned how to play the Eagles, everything that the lawyers wanted to hear. And that was a good education. And then one of those lawyers, the bass player in that band and I.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (14:09.128)
Yeah.

Nicole (14:29.678)
started for the first time in my life an all original band where the songs were written by me and I was going to sing. No, it was called Blue Fur and it we played

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (14:38.015)
or was that the love me nots?

Okay.

Nicole (14:44.75)
A lot of free shows, I can’t say we were all that great, we were fine. We won some awards around Phoenix actually for Best New Wave Band and stuff like that. It sounded a little bit like Blondie. We put out a couple records just for fun and built a whole recording studio, got married, had kids kind of by accident, but that worked out fine. And then one of those shows…

somebody came up to me after the show. was one of those shows where nobody was there. It some, like a few people sitting in the back in this dark dive bar. And this guy in a cowboy hat walked up to me and said, I want you to front this new band concept I have.

Look me up and tell me if you’ll do it I didn’t even wait I didn’t even know who he was I was like, yes, I will do it I don’t care what it is. Let’s go and cuz I really just want to play and then I look him up and it’s Michael Johnny Walker who was one of the best guitar players in Arizona at the time This is a guy who would walk into any bar in Arizona and never had to pay for a drink You know, he he everybody knew who this guy was and it was such a shock that he want me This lawyer or I was a judge back then actually already a judge playing in this

unknown thing to nobody and he would want me of all people to front this band and he came at me with this concept like

I

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (16:08.189)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (16:15.111)
Thank

Nicole (16:29.808)
the Damned, and then, you know, since he wanted to do this Garage Rock thing, we listened to MC-5 and this dude just… all this stuff I had never heard before, ever! And I just absorbed it like a sponge. It spoke to me so easily. First of all, the riffs were all blues based, so they were easy for me to pick up on because I knew all the jazz stuff. And Garage Rock is very similar, chord structure-wise, to…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (16:42.783)
Nice.

Mm-hmm.

Nicole (16:59.146)
Mozart, to be honest. It’s very 1-4-5 based, you know, you can follow the chord structures pretty easily. It’s nothing too crazy. It’s not prog rock, you know. And it was just super easy to slide into this thing, and he had a visual idea for what the band would look like. He had a ton of connections, and so we started the Love Me Nuts, and this thing took off immediately. We were, our very first show, we were on the cover of the Phoenix New Times. The first show!

unheard of. Then we went on my own dime, I was a lawyer, so you know, I was a judge, I had a credit card, and I was like, always just wanted to play in Europe. And we had just recorded with Jim Diamond, who did the White Stripes records, we recorded with him in Detroit, and he got us on the, we were on the cover of Spin Magazine and all this stuff, and I was like, I just want to go to Europe, and I think this band could do that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (17:37.791)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole (17:44.95)
So I whip out the credit card and made a few calls and got a couple shows booked. And that very first tour, we played in Paris and a record label came and we signed with this record label, Bad Reputation, that night. And they did incredible things for us. We were in Rolling Stone and Rock and Folk and it just exploded.

Far more than we ever expected. So now I’m flying home from Paris all the time at 630 in the morning on Mondays and trying to go to be on the bench by 830 with eyeliner still, you know, and like trying to deal with the jet lag and trying to make everything work. And I did because I both jobs like incredibly seriously. But but. I’m sorry, yes, I’m sorry, I’m just capital.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (18:13.343)
I

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (18:23.549)
Do you mind if I jump in there? because you’ve said so much cool stuff and I have so many questions. Even just to comment, I mean, I’m still blown away by the whole Prince and Sinead O’Connor connection.

Nicole (18:31.348)
Go!

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (18:40.285)
We’re here talking about your new stuff. There’s a lot of punk and contrarian to the music and to the scene. But those artists were similar in that way where they were, I mean, she famously ripped up the photo of the Pope and Prince famously said, like, I’m not working with anyone that doesn’t own their own masters. I can see how the two minds came together because they’re thinking, you know, the same way. How, like, where is the cross section of the contrarian and the punk rock for you and legal system?

Nicole (19:10.786)
Well, I think you can figure that out. When you’re the man by day, you don’t want to be the man by night. You want to get away from that. I heard so many stories of struggle and difficulty and pain and addiction all day long. I mean, I can’t even begin with those stories. They were so heart-wrenching. And

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (19:17.727)
Mmm.

Nicole (19:40.622)
You know, obviously I wasn’t some kind of hammer judge. That’s not my personality. I had a psychology background. really wanted to get people into counseling, get people into therapy, get people the help they needed, find and help connect them with resources. And I spent all day trying to figure out how to change people’s behavior to make their lives better. And when you go home at night, you need a release from that. You need a place to put those stories. You need a place to

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (20:01.396)
Yeah.

Nicole (20:08.044)
to pour your guts out and to pour your heart out and cry over it. And what better place than music? And even me with my tiny little struggle of wanting to do music and not getting to do it all day long was this great source of depression and strife for me also. I was a very sad person through a lot of our life because I just wanted to do this thing and I couldn’t get to it, you know? And then you have kids and that’s…

you know, that isn’t part of the plan either. And like, I don’t know, it kind of, it wasn’t going to plan for me. And I saw so many, so many similar stories in court. So yeah, I think I came home at night and it was very easy for me to not turn on the TV or do what a lot of people do. I would go straight into my studio and put my headphones on and start creating. And that was, that’s how I, that’s how I made it. That’s how I made it through my TV. That’s the only way I could face it in a way.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (20:40.083)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (20:55.145)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (20:59.699)
Yeah, that makes sense. mean, people, do my therapists say? Empathy comes from experience, right? When you go through something, then you can empathize because you understand what that person is going through.

you’re sitting there hearing all these heavy things. You’re not necessarily empathetic in that situation, but you’re taking on some of those feelings, taking on some of those stresses, the weight of these people. so you’re coming home and leveraging the music, the creation as your output, as the way for you to decompress from all of that stuff that you’ve been hearing day in and day out. Makes perfect sense. With

Nicole (21:41.526)
Exactly. And I saw a lot of… I think for some judges, when a person comes before you in a criminal court and they are erect, they are, you know, covered with sores and they’ve been addicts for years and they have no hope and they’ve lost their families, they’ve lost everything, they don’t know where to turn. I think for some judges they see a lost cause or they see something they can’t relate to at all and it’s frustrating and they just want to get on to the next case. I don’t know. I’m over-generalizing what people might think, but…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:03.891)
Thank you.

Nicole (22:11.33)
they can’t relate to it. I go to these punk dives every night and I see that happen to the people I know and the people I respect and these hugely talented people who get addicted or lose their houses or I don’t know they I watched it right before my eyes happen in the music world.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:16.221)
Yeah.

Nicole (22:31.886)
And when I see that person come to for me in court, it’s a very different experience maybe for me than other legal professionals. I see somebody I might know and I really dig in and try and figure their world out how to get it back on track. And that’s a lot to carry with you, with yourself, yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:38.74)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:48.095)
Definitely. One of my mantras as a business owner and a boss and a father as a partner is firm but fair. I try to remind myself firm but fair all the time. You know, we talked about love and logic at the beginning. Is it hard or easy for your average judge to be firm but fair, to have, you know, a soft spot for what’s happening, but also dole out, you know, whatever sentence it is that justifies the

the situation.

Nicole (23:20.32)
It was a very tough position to be in. I will say that the state of Arizona has, from what I saw, a pretty solid bench. It’s a very, especially when I was there, a very conservative state. I did not relate to a lot of the things that were going on around me.

on a very real level going on around me right down to Sheriff Joe running the jails and a lot of nationally known things were happening in the Arizona right around me in that legal system that I had trouble with in my heart and I definitely stuck out like a sore thumb in where I was when I was doing and yet kudos to the place where I worked in Gilbert, Arizona because

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (23:57.471)
Mmm.

Nicole (24:07.47)
That City Council may not have agreed with all of my decisions, but that really wasn’t their job You know their job was to have somebody on the bench that they respected as far as their thought process and they they kept me on the bench all those years of playing punk rock and being on the covers of stuff and

I will say this, when that first New Times article came out with me on the cover in my go-go dress screaming into a microphone, my presiding judge came in and put the article on my desk and said, I don’t think the city council is gonna like this. And I’m like, well, I got two things to say about this. What I’m wearing there, if you have a problem with that.

My mom made that dress by hand. It was really hot in the 60s. It was really dignified. And I think you’re looking at it out of context. But secondly, if I was an Olympic swimmer, I would be on the cover in my swimsuit holding my gold medal and everybody would be fine with that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (24:55.935)
Yeah.

Nicole (25:03.5)
So I don’t see the difference. I’m excelling in a different field and you’re upset, you know? And he walked, he was just kind of shrugged and walked out and I never heard from him again. And then flash forward to like 10 years later and the court is retweeting my band tweets saying, we’re not your grandfather’s court. So they came around and kudos to them. They figured out.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (25:18.761)
you

Nicole (25:26.806)
I started teaching judicial ethics because I think they saw me juggle this. for the state of Arizona, I was teaching judicial ethics about how to manage being dignified and being portrayed as dignified and having people, because that’s a part of the ethics rules in Arizona, living your life in a…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (25:44.383)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole (25:46.734)
in a dignified way so that when people come to court they respect the position and you don’t detract from that or distract from that when you’re in your regular life. And obviously I was doing stuff that didn’t jive exactly maybe. But it did jive because if nothing else it brought a lot of people that I was seeing out in this punk world to the table and made them realize that the people they were seeing in the law world were human.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (25:57.385)
Yeah.

Nicole (26:11.43)
And there is this symbiosis. They would come to me, and they still come to me, all the time. Nicole, can you look over this contract for me? Can you check over this thing? My friend got a DUI. Do you know anybody? know, like, there’s, it’s, they’re living life too, and they need lawyers, and lawyers need them. And I don’t know, there’s a, maybe a cut down on the fear between the two bodies. I don’t know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (26:33.958)
I think that’s such an important point. mean, everyone in the world grows up differently, different countries, different regions have different history and culture. How I grew up, know, seeing this grandfather who was in the music industry in Canada and, wearing tuxes and going to a lot of classical events. When I was with them, it was the weekend and he was wearing like

Camo and my god flannel we’d be like at the cottage and he’d be hunting he’d like You know gut stuff himself. He taught me how to fish how to tie hooks it was this really cool dichotomy and you know that I grew up on things like James Bond and I think my parents instilled in me this idea that

you can be classical and punk rock at the same time. That’s totally cool. In fact, it’s awesome. And all you have to do is respect what you’re doing in those circles. Don’t be fake, be authentic wherever you are and allow that natural thing to come through. I I saw it in the metal scene, right? There’s so many metalheads who are like just throwing down and getting drunk and letting their hair out. And then all of a sudden on Monday they’re in a suit and you’re like, my God, this guy’s a chemical engineer. I had no idea.

Nicole (27:49.902)
Brian May! He’s you know, from Queen! He was a rocket scientist! Like, yeah, I mean, there’s an intensity to all of it, right? Somebody asked me the other day in an interview, what’s the common thread between all the music you like? And I’m like, it’s the intensity, you know? The passion! And if somebody’s passionate about punk rock or metal or classical…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (27:59.231)
I’m.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (28:07.251)
Yeah.

Nicole (28:14.562)
that will carry over into a lot of areas in their lives, their love life and the way they mow their freaking lawn. I mean, they’re gonna be intense about stuff. yeah, I think it’s, in fact, I know that there’s a carryover because now I have the side project, Black Violet, and all the Darts fans are migrating right over to it like it’s nothing. know, everybody’s got, nobody’s one dimensional. Everybody likes a lot of stuff.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (28:41.897)
I want to come back to the music and all the things that you’re doing now, but I have to ask as well, in that world, and this translates, think, to anyone that’s a human, but specifically in your world, how hard is it to retain your moral compass, to retain your morality in general when there is…

a legal system, potentially pressures from different people or bribery and not saying that you saw any of that but like you hear about it all the time. How is it to stand your ground?

Nicole (29:18.7)
I never saw bribery, but what I did see at varying degrees was what I would can only term as a kind of cruelty. extreme lack of empathy for what people were going through, I saw it again and again and again. Not from everybody, there was a lot of empathy also, and there were incredibly great people in the legal system.

There are great cops and there are great judges and there are incredible detention officers who are working really hard and are so kind. But they don’t get the press, obviously. And you never see those guys. And I had a lot of those guys that they would come to my shows even. Just really, really cool, kind people who got it. But yeah, when you’re faced with the daily

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (29:52.415)
and that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (30:02.397)
Yeah.

Nicole (30:13.514)
expectation that you’ll fit into an environment that you don’t fit into at all, it can be very frustrating. I went home…

I can honestly say that I would drive home crying. had a one hour commute and I would cry most of the way home a lot of days. And I would get home, I mean I’ve been married three times, it’s no secret. It’s impossible to keep a relationship going when you’re miserable and when you’re trying to juggle this musical life that you can’t have and you’re frustrated with what’s going on at work and you can’t bring anything to the table in a relationship when you’re dealing with all that stuff on your own. You haven’t figured yourself out yet, you know?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (30:39.475)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole (30:53.15)
And so yeah, the moral compass, I will say the one thing, the moral compass that burns very brightly in me are my parents, who even though they were never part of the legal system and never studied sociology or they have any clue about that stuff, just have this innate sense of justice. My mom moved to America with dark skin in the 60s and my parents got married and my dad was very white from Michigan and they put up with a lot of stuff.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (30:53.279)
That’s.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (31:12.511)
Mm.

Nicole (31:22.902)
And I think that made them very sensitive to injustice. And they have huge hearts for the people in their lives who are suffering in any way. And that made me very, my brother is an emergency room doctor, he’s very much the same way too. that moral compass never wavered, that candle burned very brightly. could spot.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (31:26.942)
Yeah.

Nicole (31:47.638)
I could spot the injustices pretty quickly, pretty easily. And even if I couldn’t, I tried to change it in my own little world and not do what I wanted. There was a quiet rebellion in courtroom eight that a lot of people didn’t see, but I had to do my own thing.

and it was vastly different from what some of the other courtrooms were doing, but I quietly did it in a way that I thought wouldn’t ruffle too many feathers because I didn’t want to get shut down or fired or I just wanted to quietly make the changes I thought needed to happen to make sure justice was happening and then I’d go home and scream about it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (32:28.775)
I feel like that should be your future memoir title, Quiet Rebellion and Court Roommate.

Absolutely.

Nicole (32:40.494)
Maybe it’s gonna be a song now. Boy, that’s a good title.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (32:43.217)
It sure is. Take it, please do. You said a couple things there, which I want to talk about the marriage because I can relate, and the happiness. My family is Eastern European. They fled Europe, dealt with the Nazis, and then fled when Russians were invaded and communism. The Czech Republic, former Czechoslovakia, is one of or the most atheistic country in Europe. However,

Somehow, without religion or anything, I grew up in a family that always said, be good for goodness sake. There’s no reason other to be good than for the sake of being good, and you have to be good. And I think that most people in this world are inherently good. In fact, we live life doing good things all the time. And when we fall, when we falter, that one bad thing, it stands out the most and people see that and remember that and tweet that, et cetera, the most because, you know.

Nicole (33:28.183)
I agree.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (33:41.991)
I guess maybe they’re not used to that. I have a really good friend who happens to work in one of your three letter organizations down there and he is one of the most down to earth, kind, loving, giving, emotive men that I know and he’s like, this is actually what’s more common with the people I work with, not the other side of the story that is depicted in media. It’s fascinating how…

I don’t know, there’s just, there’s so much emphasis on the bad that’s happening in the world when most of it’s pretty good. Most of us are trying to help each other out.

Nicole (34:20.48)
It doesn’t make a very good news story to go, everybody was nice to everybody today, let’s go have a great day, you know, then they’ll, mm-mm. You’re not gonna tune into that, so. Unfortunately, I would.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (34:23.711)
You

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (34:31.359)
Totally fair. You said something really key. said it’s not news that you’ve been married three times. I’ve been married twice and I actually just had a falling out with my ex a couple years ago. Now in a new relationship, I’m looking at marriage number three.

What I realized was, shit, I spent all this time in my life not working on myself, not making sure that I was happy, being anxiously attached in love, and all kinds of things that I had to learn to be a stronger, better man for not only myself, but my team and my kids and my new partner. When did you start to truly love yourself, be happy with yourself? Like, how have you progressed in that?

Nicole (35:15.278)
it’s the process in earnest. thought I was working on myself all those years, but there were some big things that needed to change, that just couldn’t. And ironically, COVID gave me that chance because the bands weren’t, my band wasn’t touring. I was…

in a difficult relationship at the time, not a marriage, it was post marriages, I was in a, so I have a train going by by the way, so ignore that. But, and I realized at one point, I don’t, it’s very quiet now, it’s COVID, nothing’s happening and I’m just sitting here with myself and I don’t like what’s going on. I don’t like.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (35:50.907)
good.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (36:03.113)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole (36:07.234)
What’s going on? I’m not happy. Still, I’ve tried every kind of relationship. I’ve tried so many things and I can’t make it work. So what is going wrong?

And

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (36:20.42)
Just hold on because I can cut it out. Don’t worry.

Nicole (36:25.518)
So the first thing I cut out were things that were physically, I thought, for me so that I could clear my head better. I stopped drinking alcohol. I became a vegan.

I started doing low carb stuff. I started exercising a lot. A lot of people during COVID were drinking more and eating more donuts and all that stuff because in watching more TV, I was kind of doing the opposite. I was withdrawing from the world in a lot of ways.

moved from the house I had lived in with my last husband and moved to a little apartment right next to the court so could walk to work. So that cut out that horrible commute. For the first time, I was outside walking to work during sunrise and sunsets, seeing the air in the world and not stuck in traffic. Little changes like that that maybe opened my eyes a lot. when I think…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (37:10.335)
Mmm.

Nicole (37:25.762)
I mean, it’s not like I was some kind of drunk, like, I think alcohol was so much a part of the law world and part of the rock world that that was the first thing you do when you enter a room is you go order a drink. The first thing you do when you get to a party is somebody hands you a martini, you know, and it, it does put a filter or a curtain in front of your eyes, in front of your whole head where you don’t hear and see things right, especially yourself. And I can trace back,

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (37:38.831)
and

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (37:51.358)
Yeah.

Nicole (37:55.648)
started to trace back and go, God, I made a lot of decisions when I was, you know, I’d had a couple of drinks and I don’t like those decisions. I would never have made those decisions or been with that person or followed through that thing if I hadn’t had that, you know, that filter in place. So that was really interesting. I started doing a lot of therapy and I don’t know, a lot of…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (38:13.503)
Cool.

Nicole (38:18.784)
truths came to light at that point and one of those truths was I got to figure out how to do this music. I was already doing music at a pretty high level. We were already signed to Jello’s label. was a lot already. We’d already toured with the dam. There was a lot of things happening, but I realized that I was spending a lot of time even musically writing what I thought other people liked. And you remember it started with the Love Me Nuts where I was being taught the music by somebody else and I was writing to their concept and I loved it and

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (38:38.46)
and

Nicole (38:48.688)
I felt really like I was good at it. But it just carried over into the darts. My base player at the time had come from the love me nuts. And I think I was still trying to impress her. And I was still trying to make sure that she liked what I was doing. And COVID gave me a chance to step back and go, wait a minute. What do I like? I don’t even know my favorite color is anymore. I don’t know anything. I got to start fresh.

I’ve been spending so much time raising kids and going to work and dealing with marriages that aren’t working and trying to make band members happy and I don’t even know who I am. So I started dabbling in jazz again, which I loved, and I started just watching all kinds of movies and actually a lot of James Bond, now that you mention it, and just reconnecting with stuff that I really loved and that’s how Black Violet was born during that time period too.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (39:23.528)
Hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (39:35.805)
it.

Nicole (39:43.384)
So that’s what’s

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (39:43.647)
It’s just to jump in, it almost sounds like this point in your life allowed you the freedom to not only reflect on yourself or go inwards, but in your childhood and then start to maybe shed some of those subconscious attachments that you, maybe attachments is the wrong word, subconscious choices or decisions or pressures you were putting on yourself from your parents having expectations.

Nicole (40:06.03)
Yes. I lived, I was buried in expectations. And they were ill-intended. don’t think anybody in my life had an evil heart or anything or wanted me to not be happy. They wanted me to be happy.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (40:13.438)
Mmm.

Nicole (40:23.03)
And they thought I was being, they thought I could put on a great face. I mean, they thought I was doing really well on paper. It looked great. I had amazing bands touring the world, signed to great labels. I had this incredible job. I was a 27 year old judge in Arizona. On paper I looked incredible. I beautiful twin daughters who were brilliant and it looked great. But inside, none of those were really my choice when you really looked at it. You know, I stumbled into all of it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (40:41.161)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (40:49.822)
Yeah.

Nicole (40:52.69)
And yeah, I turned it around and started to make my own choices right around then. It was a very, I’m still trying to figure it out to be honest. But that was when it started.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (41:00.799)
think that we do that for a lifetime. Sorry, it’s rough.

Nicole (41:04.086)
I hope so. No, I hope so, right? That we should. Because we’re always changing too. What we are is always changing too. So we should always re-examine that. And then the real change came when I reached in Arizona, you can retire from the government if you’ve always worked for the government and you reach a certain number of points, which is your age plus the number of years you’ve worked there. And since I had only worked for the government since the day I graduated, I reached that point and it

great age and I could retire with a pension. And I was still here doing my music and I so I was like okay okay September 29th 2022 I can retire with a pension. And I had that date I had the the countdown on Post-it notes on my desk for like two years every day. And I started making plans what am I going to do and my dream was to move to France. I wanted to live

I grew up in Chicago, as you know, with seasons and rain and snow and I loved all that stuff and I never really intended to end up in Arizona, but I got a scholarship to the U of A down in Tucson and I ended up just staying there. I was never a desert person. I didn’t like the heat. That was another thing that I was unhappy about that never quite jived. So when it came time to leave, I was like, I can go anywhere. I can go anywhere and I’m going to have this pension that I can live on.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (42:16.457)
Okay.

Nicole (42:30.06)
Where do I want to go? Can you imagine that beautiful choice that you have and I wasn’t dating anyone? wasn’t… my life was… my kids were grown up and out of the hat, like, I could do anything. What a sense of a free choice that I never had. So I picked Brittany, France, one of the most beautiful places in the world that I love, on the English Channel with the cliffs and the rocky beaches and the rain and all that stuff.

And unfortunately, I gave all my furniture away. was just about to hit send on the long stay visa when my lawyer said, hang on, hang on, hang on. If you move there, there’s going to be all kinds of tax consequences for expats in Europe right now, especially in France that you don’t want to deal with quite yet. Let me work through some of this stuff before you actually make the move. I’m like, my God. OK, but I already gave everything away. Everything I own fits in my car right now. What am I going to do?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (43:08.787)
Mmm.

Nicole (43:23.726)
And I retire in like a month, 30 days. I need a plan. And so I just looked at America and I’m like, where in America do I want to go? And I remembered, you know, I was chasing at Rocky Beach and I was chasing that rain and Seattle was an obvious choice. I remember that every time I toured here, I had the best time in the world. They loved my bands up here. I had friends here, a family sort of here that I kind of knew a little bit and

It was a no-brainer. I came up here just for a weekend to check it out and I it’s locked It was like BAM. This is where I want to be. I know it. I fully know it in one day

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (43:56.809)
Yeah.

Nicole (44:02.358)
And right now, where I’m talking to you from, is literally on the same spot where I made that first exploratory drive, because that’s how much it locked in for me. And I have never looked back. That was four years ago now, and it was the best decision I ever made. And once I got away from the job and I was doing music full-time, living in a place that thrilled me every day.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (44:13.791)
That’s so cool.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (44:26.345)
Mm.

Nicole (44:26.678)
Yeah, and what a change that is. The happiness that you find is… I never thought I would get here.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (44:34.655)
I can totally relate. I’ll never forget. I’m 45. I’ll never forget when I moved with my ex and kids to North Vancouver, we said we’re going to move. Let’s finally do it. We came out here for a little trip.

got an Airbnb in North Van and I was like, man, it’s so nice here. Wouldn’t it be funny if we ended up like, you know, within a few blocks of this area? Sure enough, that’s what happened. We’ve like got our place right there. And then it was during the first couple of years that I started to have this like conversation with myself where I’ve said, why has society conditioned us to live in chaos and seek peace when we should be living in peace and seeking chaos?

Nicole (45:18.363)
my god, what a beautiful quote. yes, yes.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (45:22.719)
So I found this like credit to her. My ex found this amazing, like basically retirement community by the mountains and the water, super affordable for, for, you know, where we are. And, uh, everyone was like, Oh, you’re going to hate it. It’s like, you know, of the middle of nowhere is the opposite. I love it. And for me, it’s like a 40 minute drive to like the clubs and rock menus downtown. So I get to go for a walk and be by the ocean all week long. And then when I feel like going nuts, I’ll just drive.

Nicole (45:52.077)
You- we are living parallel lives! That is exactly my situation, 100 % the same exact thing. I’m 40 minutes from Seattle. I’m living on the wa- I live in a tiny A-frame house overlooking the water where I can see whales sometimes from my bedroom window. Like it’s… And I- when I’m not on tour, I mean we go on these crazy tours, 200 shows a year sometimes, you know, and so when I’m home, I kinda don’t want to go to a show, you know? I kinda want to just watch the whales and walk by the water and…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (45:58.641)
It’s…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (46:07.933)
life.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (46:21.843)
Yeah.

Nicole (46:21.932)
work on my music and not see another soul. That is my happiness. I love it so much.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (46:29.097)
How, now that you have hindsight, that, know, was it your boss, I guess you said, that like dropped that newspaper on your desk. How cathartic and freeing was that moment? After years of hiding.

Nicole (46:43.934)
my gosh, yeah. I was hiding so much that when that article came out, I was so scared of the lawyers who were coming before me that day in court that they were going to see this article and not respect me. That I went to the front and the judge is parking back and kind of sneak in, know. But I parked my car and then I quietly went to the front of the courthouse where they had the newsstand, the free newsstand thing with all the new times. And I took them and I put them in the back.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (46:54.943)
You

Nicole (47:13.648)
that nobody would see them in front of the courthouse and make the connection. I I was so terrified. And then later, you know, they did a bunch of newspaper articles on just me being a judge and a rock person and it all blew up eventually really quickly. yeah, I being away from it now in hindsight, my fear was was well placed. I don’t think anybody knew.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (47:27.956)
Yeah.

Nicole (47:39.526)
what to do with this situation. I still can’t find anybody else that I’ve met who’s lived that exact same situation. there was no history behind it. Nobody knew what to do. Especially in Arizona, nobody knew what to do. So yeah, it was well placed. I managed it, I think, the best I could. In hindsight, would I have done stuff differently? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know if I could have and managed to be where I’m at right now. It was a long day and wait to get here.

But here I am and whatever got me here, can’t knock it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (48:09.854)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (48:14.397)
Yeah, well good for you. I think it’s an important lesson, know, and it’s easier said than done, but…

we in life will fixate on something and be embarrassed about something and then in hindsight more often than not people don’t care people forget about it really quickly and then in turn what may happen is what happened with you or all of a sudden they’re like my god this is so cool we have to support our friend that we had this issue with you know five ten years later so just own your thing stay grounded and keep going speaking of which you’re obviously a very industrious woman

How the hell did you balance lawyer, judge, band, music, and a relationship, and parenting, not just to one kid, but twins? I have several kids in this house. I know how time consuming it is. How the shit did you do it all?

Nicole (49:07.966)
sleep. I’m not a big… I mean, I’ll sleep, but I’m not… I can go without sleep when the time demands, and that’s served me well in the rock world too. yeah, the weird thing about being a judge as opposed to a lawyer is that there’s a lot of downtime that people don’t see. You wait a lot. You’re waiting… you pick your jury and you’re very busy picking your jury.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (49:29.087)
Hmm.

Nicole (49:33.474)
But then the lawyers have to talk and the lawyers have to do their discovery and the lawyers have to do interviews and there’s people have to make decisions. It takes them a minute. People don’t just plead guilty the day they’re charged. It’s a long process where they have to think and they have to investigate. And what does the judge do? That whole time it’s just we sit and we wait. Like, okay. And even if you have a thousand cases, there’s a lot of waiting every single day. So.

And then you’ll schedule a three day jury trial, but then on day one, something will go wrong, the case will get dismissed, or the guy will decide to plead guilty or something, and then you have three days where you didn’t have anything scheduled now, and they can’t just put another trial in there because nobody’s ready. like, it’s a very strange schedule that nobody behind the scenes really sees. So I spent a lot of time in chambers just hanging out.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (50:20.297)
That’s cool.

Nicole (50:25.722)
And thankfully, I had my personal laptop there and my headphones and my little keyboard controller. And I would spend the downtime working on the music. All the judges had hobbies. They all had hobbies. They all had something because you needed it. And so as far as the music, when I was kind of juggling both all day long and then the minute I went home, I would listen to demos in the car on the way to and from.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (50:38.014)
Yeah.

Nicole (50:53.248)
I was on interviews, just like this one, and calls with my labels while I commuted. One of my management now is in France, and so…

we start talking at one in the morning my time. So that’s, you know, different. so that’s how the music fit in. As far as touring, when you looked at the Love Me Not schedules or the Dart schedules back when I was working, I would always make sure to schedule for the year and then put it on like one poster. So it looked like a million dates. But when you really drilled down, it was like long weekends, long weekends, long weekends, long weekends, know, 10 days, long weekend, long weekend. that’s Thanksgiving. And I would make it work.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (51:09.055)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (51:33.054)
Yeah.

Nicole (51:35.422)
that it did not affect the schedule. I planned my tours months in advance, six months sometimes. Everything was, the plane tickets were already bought because I needed to have a substitute judge come in and I needed to plan a lot of things who was gonna take care of my kids. I had, I was divorced and so he had the kids when I was on tour and we made that work somehow. My parents…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (51:56.916)
Really.

Nicole (52:00.342)
In the early days when my kids were little, they had just retired and they moved to Phoenix to help take care of the kids. And that came with lot of lectures about why are you touring? What’s with this music? But they took care of my kids still. And that was really nice. my kids and my parents are still very, very tight to this day as a result.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (52:10.015)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (52:17.983)
I kind of figured you had like some downtime. I didn’t even think about the chambers. I was thinking more like when you’re sitting there and people are deliberating and maybe you’re like at the desk writing lyrics.

Nicole (52:27.948)
No, no, When you’re on the bench, you cannot get away with murder. You have to be focused, if nothing else, you have to look focused. People have to respect the position, you know. They can’t think that you’re distracted in any way. a lot of what goes on in a judge’s life isn’t on the bench at all. It’s behind the scenes. And we spend a lot of time just hanging out, shooting the shit in chambers together, waiting.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (52:38.164)
Yeah.

Nicole (52:55.682)
You know, and yeah, people don’t see that side.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (52:55.849)
Yeah.

that vision of like you know your guitar is in there or your keys and you’re just rocking out and someone knocks you’re like just a minute and you put everything away to get back to proper mode.

Nicole (53:07.043)
all the time. My clerks knew that if they knock on the door, I wouldn’t hear them because I had headphones on. So they had to come in and tap me on the shoulder and be like, yeah, OK, you know. And they just got used to it. We all like it. My presiding judge was a fly fisherman who taught fly fishing and everything. And he had a canoe hanging from the ceiling. And like everybody had a thing that was that was their own their own personal life because you had to or you lose your mind.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (53:26.42)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (53:31.935)
So music came first, then law. Music came first in the sense that you discovered it at a young age and that it was in you. Let’s just shift for a second into the mindset. I kind of asked how you balance it all and physically I understand how you’re doing that based on your schedule, but like mentally.

It’s draining to do so much, right? Some people can only handle one thing, like the nine to five for them is taxing, they come home, their family, that’s it. But you factor it in so many other things. To what do you owe your level of productivity? How have you squared that away?

Nicole (54:11.586)
My mom is turning 87 while I’m on tour next month. She will be selling my merch with me. She will be at the shows. She will be driving my band around, cooking for them at two in the morning after the gig. This is my mom. She’s a fireball. She cannot sit still for two seconds.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (54:19.391)
Ha

Nicole (54:34.122)
My dad was very similar also. He was always… he was a scientist to the core. When he wasn’t at work, he was researching something at home in his office. He was always doing research. Always. It never… he had… he would sit at the dining table and be writing on index cards all the things about the chemical formulas and stuff. That… it never stopped. So in my world, that passion for what you do never stops. My kids are like that.

One of my twins especially is a… She’s a neuroscientist. She’s a jazz bassist in two groups. She… She writes… It’s so hard to describe, but we’re just… We’re just multitaskers. I can literally be talking to you and on my phone right now, which is blowing up, it’s like other things are happening. Outside I can see my landlords doing stuff. You know, like there’s a multitasking all the time. And that’s just how we thrive in my family, I think.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (55:17.129)
It’s nice.

Nicole (55:32.494)
When things are quiet, I get home from tour and within one day I get sick because there’s nothing going on. My adrenaline goes… So yeah, I think that’s just my personality. And I know my bandmates sometimes have a hard time, I don’t want to say keeping up, but…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (55:45.631)
Okay.

Nicole (55:52.704)
they need some downtime sometimes and I don’t and they you know there have been many a bandmate who was like just give me a minute you just sent that email I can’t get to it right I can’t get my head around it yet you know and I’ll be like yeah but but but but because everything for me is like and so yeah I have to I have to slow myself down I have to surround myself with people that slow me down sometimes

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (56:03.678)
Yeah.

Nicole (56:21.07)
Because I’ll just go a mile a minute if you let me.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (56:24.711)
Yeah, I’m the same way. I do believe in focusing in on one task at a time. And I really like to do that and get that task done. But I’m always like a chess player, always thinking about what should I do in what order in order to make the day as efficient as possible? the laundry needs to be done and you need to like, you know, sweep this area. Well, I can do those tonight when I’m watching TV with the kids and I can, right? Like you’re constantly replanting.

Nicole (56:51.33)
my to-do list is hilarious. I keep it on my phone and I just update it a hundred times a day. And I look at it a hundred times a day and taking things off and putting things on and taking things off putting on. And yeah, it’s a… I already have studio time scheduled for August for both of my bands, you know, and the albums are written, the next albums are written, like, because I’m so busy and I like being this busy with the music, but there’s so much going on between now and then that if I don’t have it all figured out and planned now, it won’t get done. And then…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (57:05.471)
Thanks.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (57:19.166)
Yeah.

Nicole (57:19.79)
by the time I want to put out a record next year, it won’t have been recorded yet. And like, it’s all a chess game. You’re right.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (57:27.103)
Well, you kind of answered this, I was gonna say like, wow, so much productivity, seven albums, a bunch of EPs within a 10 year period, but you’re obviously prolific and you’re industrious, like I said, but you’re probably also making up for lost time. You found like your passion and love and you’re like, I spent so much time doing this other stuff. I need to like be all in and double speed.

Nicole (57:48.62)
Absolutely. The clock ticks hard in my life. And it’s loud. I’m definitely the oldest person in all of my bands. And I know I can’t jump around on stage in a punk band when I’m 90. Although my daughter thinks that would be really cool. I think that’s probably not happen. But yeah, I think, I feel like…

If I don’t put out a record a year, which has always been my goal since the Love Me Nots days, I feel like I’m slacking. I feel like, no, no, no, I’ve got all these songs. No, no, we gotta do it. We gotta do it! There’s a pressure to get it out while I can, for sure.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (58:32.829)
Yeah, I feel that self-imposed pressure. I was a stoner for way too much university and I slacked off. As much as I had good experiences, I slacked off. My biggest idols are Tupac and Kurt Cobain. And so for a long period of my life, I had this huge guilt of like, look at how young they died and how much they accomplished. You’ve done nothing with your life. Get your shit together. And then I discovered Anthony Bourdain later in life.

Ironically, I discovered him on his death day, which was just a trip in and of itself, but it gave me solace that you can still do so much. Make up for lost time, go hard, go hard now because he also squandered a lot of time in the beginning and then took off later in life. keep going. What’s…

Nicole (59:01.15)
crazy.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (59:23.017)
Based on how you were raised and the advice and the stuff that your parents taught you, what are you doing differently or what’s the main thing you do differently for your kids? Like how have you inspired them or spoken to them opposing what your parents said to you?

Nicole (59:38.03)
I’m a polar opposite with my kids than my parents were with me. I’m the study whatever you want. Don’t even go to college if you don’t want to. Do what you love and do it as hard as you can. Because then you’ll excel, you know? At whatever, at whatever. I don’t care if you want to be… Be a professional chess player. That’s fine, you know? Yeah, you’ll starve. That’s okay. You’re gonna love your life.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (59:55.923)
and

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:00:04.671)
you

Nicole (01:00:05.634)
You’ll figure it out. You’ll figure out the money. But if you’re doing what you love, the money will be there somewhere. And I was just a big believer in that. And luckily in this country, I think it still holds true. But you have to really love it, and you have to go really hard on it, and you have to not slack, you know? And my kids are not slackers. One of my kids… And this is really funny. They’re twins. They grew up in Arizona.

And like I said, I was like, go anywhere, study anything, do whatever. They both picked colleges in Ohio independently of each other, half an hour away from each other. And so then I was going to Ohio all the time to visit them. My one twin is a very…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:00:43.209)
Money.

Nicole (01:00:51.762)
there’s no other word. She’s a genius. She’s a genius. This is a kid that even as a young child was like, I want to learn Old Norse. And so I’m going to start a club at school. Nobody joined the club, but she found the teacher to do it. So it was her and this teacher. Now she speaks. Now she knows Old Norse. She learned Russian in two weeks and she speaks to people on the airplane and basically fluent Russian. She she’s a neuroscientist now with a PhD that she got in three years with a linguist.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:01:20.03)
Wow.

Nicole (01:01:21.616)
bent and she just got hired in England by the space program for the country of England to study how astronauts communicate in space. This is, she’s a jazz bassist that would, she went to Oberlin down in Ohio which is a very good music school even though she didn’t study music and she would go out with her upright bass and busk at the farmers market.

and sing jazz standards with her incredibly gorgeous voice. She was first chair all choir in Arizona, out of the blue, with a gorgeous voice and her incredible jazz bass playing. And she would do jazz standards for three hours just by herself and make enough money to like almost pay her rent. This child is too smart for her own good. She was the kid that was like, she’s two years old and I’m holding her and I’m telling her something. She’s like.

Mommy, you’re wrong for three reasons, let me tell you why. She’s like, short as a freaking tack. My other twin is the empathic, sweet, emotive, sobbing all the time over something, you know, just the sweetest, dripping sweet person she had to fight for everything in her life.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:02:20.253)
Hahaha!

Nicole (01:02:41.006)
She physically had ailments that would come around that she had to deal with. was just the polar opposite. They didn’t even get along, honestly. so yeah, how did I mother these two incredibly different personalities? I just told them to do what they wanted. And when they came home crying and sobbing and screaming and doing everything that kids do, I just tried to listen.

and I tried to point them in the right direction and I don’t know if they really listened to me but they were very used to me and their dad actually is also a judge so they were surrounded by judges they have my parents who were scientists there was a lot of intensity all around them and all of us have big hobbies even their dad who was in you know the band Blue Fur with me he designed a microphone preamp that on the side of his judging that is now featured in

NAMM and all these things and he’s like so everybody’s everybody’s hardcore about what they’re doing and they just picked up on that they’ve been crawling around patch cords in the living room since they were tiny and making them sing into microphones and they they just knew the drill and they absorbed that so I didn’t really have to say too much honestly I just had the live by example more than anything

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:03:56.905)
That’s awesome. You better save those genes. It sounds like there’s some valuable stuff in there that other people might want. Transitioning out of your day job into music sounds like it was really easy for you because you’ve been dying to do that for most of your life. Was there anything hard about it? Like leaving that to go into music full time?

Nicole (01:04:00.331)
you

Nicole (01:04:23.341)
Nope.

Nicole (01:04:28.594)
being totally honest. I waited with bated breath for that day. I had it fully planned and you know me now, I plan a lot. I had spreadsheets, I was ready to go, I had a plan, I moved to Seattle. I mean, other than the the weirdness of having to shift to pivot from France to Seattle in the last minute, even that was smooth. And I was welcomed in Seattle by the music community here, which is unbelievable.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:04:35.699)
Yeah.

Nicole (01:04:55.31)
Unlike all the places I’ve toured or been to, Seattle is very unique. It is a very supportive and welcoming music environment where people aren’t… It doesn’t feel competitive. It doesn’t feel backstabby. It feels like everybody goes to everybody else’s shows and plays in each other’s bands and honestly loves each other’s music, which is an incredible level of talent here that I can’t even get my head around. Everybody you meet is like… I’ll just give you an example.

I start this black violet project and I go, because I’m just looking for musicians who might want to hop on and help me out. So I go to this jazz club I’ve never been to before under Pike Place, the fish market. There’s a little jazz club that I love that I had never been to before. I go there on a Wednesday night. I’m one of…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:05:40.687)
is that the one across the street from the former gum wall?

Nicole (01:05:46.668)
I know, is it? I don’t know. yeah, no, there’s a gumball there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, there is, there is. Okay, so yeah, there’s a place. It’s now, I think it’s changed hands a few times, but it’s called the Rabbit Box Theater. It’s a tiny little jazz club. It’s intimate and beautiful. I love this place. But anyway, I go in there on a Wednesday night. I’m one of three people there, and one of those is a photographer who’s there. And playing on stage.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:05:48.671)
Do you know the gumball? I know the place, it’s so good.

Nicole (01:06:15.112)
is a hip-hop jazz act with horns and rappers and a rhythm section to die for. Every single person on that stage is blowing my mind to a degree I can’t even describe. I was just… I sat there like this is a Wednesday night in Seattle and nobody’s here. What is… what alternate universe is this? You couldn’t pay enough money in Phoenix to have this there. It doesn’t exist.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:06:42.811)
and

Nicole (01:06:43.278)
Anyway, I go up and I talk to the drummer at the end and I’m like, man, that was incredible. I don’t know who you are, but you’re my new hero and la la la. one of the, I mean, side note, one of the big influences in how I write black violet, upright bass parts and horn section parts and beats is Digital Planets, which was the rap group from the 90s. anyway, I go up to this drummer and he goes, my name’s Conrad Reel.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:06:49.983)
You

Nicole (01:07:11.406)
I go, where are you from? What have you done? Who are you? He’s like, oh, well, let’s see. I play drums for Britney Davis and for Digital Planets. I’m like, you’re the drummer for Digital Planets, what? And he’s like, yeah. And I’m like, okay, I’m going out on a limb. But if you’re playing for nobody on a Wednesday night, I don’t care. But if you’re for nobody on a Wednesday night, how much do you want to drum for my new project that I started? He’s like, I’m in. You are freaking kidding me. That’s Seattle.

is is going on in this place. The talent is all around you. Everybody you meet is a brilliant graphic designer or a brilliant trumpet player or something. So it was a very easy move. Let me just put it that way.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:07:45.087)
Mm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:07:55.187)
That’s amazing. There’s so many like key themes that have presented throughout our conversation. You’re obviously tenacious and hardworking, but you’re also planning. So you have your dream or you have goals, you have a vision, but you’re also taking risks, right? When an opportunity arises, it sounds like you’re, you’re, jumping all over it. You’ve got.

two albums out this year, Halloween Love Songs, and then your solo project, you just mentioned Black Violet, you have Dark Blue that came out, so you’re gonna be touring now to get those out to the masses, which is amazing. I really want to just kind of wrap up focusing on the music and on artist advice, because I work with a lot of artists, my website gets thousands of artists hitting it a month. Everyone needs all the help they can get.

Nicole (01:08:42.968)
Yeah, for sure.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:08:44.765)
So I was really curious if there was anything, I have a few questions, if there’s anything from your career that you pulled into your music that really helped out? Is there anything that from the legal world stood out and that you would be able to share with other artists, even if it’s just generic legal advice?

Nicole (01:09:06.402)
The best advice I can give you is to take your music seriously. Treat it like a business. That is the most boring advice I can give somebody, but I was just talking to a friend of mine about this who’s struggling, like, even just doing his taxes with his new band, and…

learning, just making a spreadsheet of your what you bring in and your expenses and just keeping track of things as a business and taking it seriously. Once you do that you’ll realize you’re not just playing in your band, all of a sudden you’re doing session work. Like you said, I take risks. I say yes to just about everything that’s presented to me for a reason. It’s always led to great things. I said yes to a random collaboration. I didn’t even know what this guy who he was.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:09:37.695)
Mm.

Nicole (01:09:49.932)
turned out he’s the creator of the American Gothic Netflix series and I’m doing a record with him out of the blue and it’s gorgeous and like say yes to things keep track of your finances because you can’t do anything if you’re dead broke as boring as that advice is and my parents were right about that you have to have you have to keep track of your money and you have to make sure that you get your worth

Which might not be much, but it’s something keep a little money coming in the door never be afraid to have a day job Because that gives you the freedom to not have to play weddings or not have to play in cover bands that you don’t want to play in you can do your music the way you want to do it

and the finances will pay for that. And then when it gets going, you can let go of those day jobs, hopefully. Maybe not. But, you know, if not, there’s no shame in that. That’s you making your life the way you want it to be.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:10:45.521)
Absolutely. Is there anything like from your legal career that you’ve pulled into your life philosophically like words to live by ideas or mantras to live by?

Nicole (01:10:57.518)
The biggest mantra I can give you, I don’t know if it’s music advice as much as life advice, is to be very grateful and kind. Those are such broad words, learning, and I’ll tell you a lot of musicians, especially talented ones, get arrogant and entitled very quickly. It only takes one good tour and I’ve seen it happen in all of my bands.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:11:03.124)
Yeah.

Nicole (01:11:24.514)
the attitude changes immediately. They’re not, they’re suddenly not very nice to the sound men. They’re suddenly not very forgiving with a hotel room that isn’t cool. They’re suddenly annoyed with each other and grumpy in the van. And there’s no time for that in this, in this life in my mind. We are, I am so grateful every single day, probably because I came from that world where I didn’t get to do it.

I’m so grateful that this is my life. That, yeah, if I can’t hear my monitor one night and a punk dive, I don’t care! I’m living this great life and I’ve learned to use my muscle memory, so I don’t have to worry about that. You know, I work around those problems. I’ll put up with a bad hotel room. I’ll, you know, live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which I do literally every day on tour because it’s convenient and cheap and easy. So that gratitude…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:12:02.216)
Yeah.

Nicole (01:12:17.558)
If you can learn to practice that every day and be like, like almost aggressively kind to the people and instead of surrounding you to help you make this life work, it’ll pay off a thousand fold. The sound man that you were kind to, that you gave a shirt to at the end of the night, that you thanked and hugged and kept in touch with is going to remember you when you come back and you’ll remember her.

and you become partners in the set and not just one person working for the other and it takes on a whole new meaning. One of our sound people now tours with us in France, you know, like it leads to lifelong good things. So those are the granitals and the chias that applies to anything you’re doing.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:12:45.747)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:13:06.911)
I couldn’t agree more if you were to find the keywords that summarize almost all the conversations I’ve had so far. Gratitude, kindness are up there with authenticity. So thank you for seeing it and not letting, I didn’t have to see it this time around.

Nicole (01:13:24.814)
It’s just the truth. think most people that feel successful and happy have discovered this.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:13:31.625)
That is so true. It took me a 20 plus year career of doing a bunch of stuff that I didn’t love for people that I didn’t care for or companies I didn’t care for. I shouldn’t say the people.

to go into work for myself on things that I’m passionate about to realize, my God, this is happiness. And now I’m so grateful for the things I do and it changes everything about one’s outlook on life. you’re nearly, I mean, you’re clearly doing that now too, having waited a lifetime to get into music full-time.

Nicole (01:14:04.866)
Yeah, my therapist said to me when one of my really down days, after one of those horrible one hour commutes, and I was like, what am I doing? She was like, hang on a second. How many people would be so grateful to have your life? You have a job that lets you tour and do what you love, and you’ve made it work so it doesn’t really get in the way of that. And it’s a job where you’re actually trying to help people every day and you feel purposeful about it and it gives you meaning.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:14:18.76)
Yeah.

Nicole (01:14:32.659)
Where’s the gratitude? you know, where, why don’t you just get up in the morning and go, thank God, thank God I have this, you know, atheism aside, you know, thank whatever being there is and thank yourself for putting yourself in this situation and go live it, you know, and man, that just, was a, that was a turning point in the way I looked at my days when she said that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:14:39.517)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:14:53.213)
Nice. Last question before I do the very challenging job of sending this over to you to give us sage advice, to wrap us up so that we’re on our way. One of the questions I get the most that admittedly I probably know the least about when it comes to the industry and being a musician is touring. Marketing, promotion, PR, publicity, management, contracts, distribution. I get it.

How hard is it to book the tour, get out there, find the venues, get it all together? Because it sounds like you did it yourself for quite a bit of time. And now even still, I don’t know if you’re doing it by yourself, but there’s a very aggressive schedule. And I know that having someone to do that, like a booking agent helps, but they’re few and far between. There’s millions of artists. They have to do it themselves. What’s the answer?

Nicole (01:15:51.854)
Thinking is the worst part of this job. I’m not going to lie. It is a heartbreaker because you get so many rejections or unanswered emails. You can send out a thousand emails, you might get one answer and it’ll probably be no. It’s heartbreaking and that’s if your band’s really good even. You know, it has nothing to do with it. The things the venues care about are not the things you care about. They don’t care about your band being great. And I say this very generally, there are venues that are different.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:16:15.144)
Yeah.

Nicole (01:16:21.73)
But what they really want to see, mean, somebody said to me earlier in my career in the Lovey Nuts, you know, we’re just glorified beer salesmen. That’s what we are. And so you you sell more beer, you get the gig, you know, and it still holds true. The draw is what they’re looking at. I have opening bands write to me every single day, even though I don’t choose them or do the booking. And they want to know, how do we get on that bill? How do we get in that bill?

And my, I’m like, I don’t know what to tell you.

My agent and the venue are going to ask you what your draw is in that area. And it’s a brutal question, because who knows? I don’t even know what my draw is in places. We’re going to play in Japan for the first time in September. I don’t know what the draw is going to be. There might be five people there. We played in Memphis to less than five people last year. And then we played Gonerfest in Memphis a week later, two weeks later, and there were 1,000 people. I don’t know. I don’t know. So it’s an impossible question to answer.

This is why I gotta train.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:17:25.097)
Just hold it, just hold the thought, let it go by a little bit.

You’re like, this is killing me. hate wasting time.

Nicole (01:17:33.429)
But yeah, I don’t have the answers to that except that My advice It’s an expensive venture. You’re gonna have to save up to do it but play out of your own town as often as you can financially because I think a lot of bands play the same five Local venues over and over and over over and over and over and over over nobody knew is hearing them

Nobody’s buying their stuff because everybody knows who they are. Nobody cares anymore. You’ve saturated your market You need to play one or two shows in your market and then get out of town Even if it’s just for the weekend, even if it’s just at your mom’s where she lives Even if it’s I don’t care what you need to do get your music out to other people go busk I don’t know Because that’s how people hear about you and that’s how you increase your draw And the Bookers

I would start really small. I would start with venues that are nothing and can barely keep their doors open and play for nothing. Play for…

the merch, know, try and sell some merch. It’s a very expensive venture to get a band off the ground. And I just did it with Black Violet so I can tell you, there is not, we’re in the red hardcore in a band for many years until it starts to turn around. I think with Dark Blue we’re finally…

pre-order sold out within an hour and I was like, yes, finally it’s starting to shift, you know? But it takes a long time and I don’t have the answers. I wish I had the answer to that! The booking is horrible and that’s why I finally, when I finally could, I passed it off to two agents who really strongly believed that they could get better deals for us than I was getting myself. And they don’t always. The money is very slim.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:19:26.173)
Mm.

Nicole (01:19:33.058)
for even for the darts. The money’s very slim. The margins are surprisingly small. We make almost all of our real money on merch sales. And so I spent a lot of time ordering merch and a lot of money ordering merch. And like right now I’m about to leave on a tour that lasts from October 6th.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:19:44.691)
super.

Nicole (01:19:52.204)
to December 6th with two bands and I have to have merch ready at all those stops because we can’t fit it all on the plane. So I’ve got to design it, have it designed, have it made, have it sent to each stop in order. It’s a lot to figure out. But if I don’t do that, I’ll never recover financially. I’ll never recover. That’s the only thing that keeps us on the road.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:20:14.215)
and

Yeah, it’s not an easy game. Someone that I spoke with said that what defines an artist is not the need or the desire to make art, it’s the connection to make art. Like when you can’t do anything else, when you just literally feel like you have to, that’s how it is. I feel the same way. I feel like there’s a lot of similarities between entrepreneurship and artistry. you have to… Yeah.

Nicole (01:20:41.643)
absolutely. They’re both businesses. I mean, honestly.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:20:45.599)
I’m so grateful for this conversation. Nicole, not just a musician, I’m going to dub it wise counsel.

Nicole (01:20:57.351)
but thank you!

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:20:59.743)
Thanks so much for your time. really appreciate it. And like I said, now you get to send us off with some amazing words for the people watching or listening.

Nicole (01:21:09.95)
my gosh, the only words I have for the world are thank you for listening to music and loving music. I’m shocked every day by the comments from people who, they’re not musicians, they are not connected to the music world and they just love it. And they come to the shows and they sway and they dance and they laugh and they hug us and they…

We love you guys so much out there in the world and we’ll never take you for granted. It’s just a beautiful thing that we share together and I hope it never ends.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:21:47.935)
Appreciate the appreciation. Give me a second. I’m just going to stop, make sure that we got everything.