The Penn Museum’s Summer Nights Concert Series will feature outdoor live music from a diverse and eclectic group of bands and musicians throughout the summer. On July 2, the stage will feature the four winners of the annual songwriting contest Philadelphia Songwriters Project, including out singer-songwriter Andrea Nardello.
Nardello said efforts like Philadelphia Songwriters Project and organizations like Penn Museum are a boon for local musicians trying sustain themselves independently.
“It’s been amazing so far,” she said. “All of the sponsors and showcases are happening after the fact. It’s incredible to me how much things have shifted as far as local awareness. As an independent artist, you don’t have a lot of reach sometimes to get your name out there. That’s one of the main reasons why, when organizations and festivals want to promote your music, that is an incredible experience for artists like us.”
The song that won Nardello the Philly Songwriters Project, “Home to Me,” was inspired by her girlfriend — and she later used it to propose to her. The song was released on her new EP, “Echo.”
Over the course of her career, Nardello’s rock-infused folk style has been compared to singer-songwriters like Melissa Etheridge and Shawn Colvin.
However, her new EP came about after a long period of uncertainty for Nardello, as she had to overcome a two-year stretch of writer’s block in order to get her songwriting groove back.
“Part of it is just the simple self-doubt when you start to put ideas together sometimes,” she said about her creative struggles. “You think to yourself the ideas aren’t good or the melodies or you don’t like the chord progressions. So therefore you never finish the idea that you are working on.”
She said “Home to Me” was a breakthrough, and she also committed herself to writing one song a week.
“It’s really about the exercise of writing. It doesn’t need to be a complete song or a work of art. It just needs to be an idea completed. It forced me to push through it even if I didn’t like what I was doing. I just got it down on paper, got it done and didn’t overthink it. That really helped as well.”
She added that bouncing her ideas off other songwriters was more appealing to her than presenting her song ideas in progress to the public.
“In a songwriting group, it’s a handful of artists and you tend to not care if people like it or not,” she said. “You send it out into the atmosphere and hope for the best. It’s also a place of safe criticism. It’s more encouraging than someone hearing the song and writing back something negative. I think it is more about working through your idea and hearing what other people do creatively to try to inspire you. I’m definitely the type of writer that … I always worry if people are going to like the music or connect with it or understand where I’m coming from. One of the most vulnerable things you can do is put your work out publicly for the world to hear. I’ve developed a tough skin over the years but I am definitely sensitive to negative feedback. You take everything with a grain of salt and move forward.”
Besides helping her overcome her writer’s block, Nardello said another benefit of being part of the group is that she developed a better pool of songs to draw from for “Echo.”
“After each album, I just tried to evolve as much as I can in every element of my music: my vocals, my guitar-playing. I think I really put a lot more, though, into these songs,” she said. “Before, I used to get collections of songs that were enough for an album and then put out an album. This time around, I collected a bunch of songs and tried to pick the best ones for the EP that made the most sense. I think that made a difference. I put a little more effort into the songs this time around and tried to make them as polished and solid as I could.”
Judging by her busy schedule this year, Nardello’s audiences have noticed the difference as well.
The album came out in February and she set out on a winter tour with CD release parties throughout the East Coast.
She’s playing at a number of Pennsylvania festivals this summer and then heading to the West Coast in August.
“Things should slow down a little bit in the fall but the summer is jam-packed with touring.”
Touring will slow down just in time for her planned fall wedding.
Speaking of her wedding, we had to ask if the acclaim and attention given to “Home to Me” caused her significant other and sometimes-muse to expect future heartfelt songwriting brilliance.
But Nardello said she isn’t worried about setting a creative precedent in the relationship.
“She dated three musicians before me and none of them ever wrote a song about her. So it was a little bit of pressure to come up with a good one. I think I hit it out of the ballpark with the proposal song. I don’t know if she expects me to write songs for her now that this one is out there. I think they kind of come naturally. I’ve never been super-good at writing songs for people but I definitely have gotten better at that kind of stuff.”
Andrea Nardello performs as part of Penn Museum’s Summer Nights Concert Series, 5-8 p.m. July 2 at 3260 South St. in University City. For more information, visit www.andreanardello.com or www.penn.museum.com.