Artist Spotlight: Oklahoma Car Crash

Written by Madeline Foster & Sophie Swenholt

In the midst of their own personal success, Nat Brown has maintained an integral role in the local DIY music scene. Their work at CD Cellar has allowed them to take the ideologies and ethics that are present at the Lab All Ages at Convergence and use them to create another place with a safe space mentality. Nat feels that by running shows, they’re helping to foster a community. Most importantly, Nat wants people to feel comfortable.

“We can’t contribute positively to a community if we are the ones putting others in unsafe situations,” they say. The Lab has influenced Nat to push themselves to be the best musician they can, and to live for what they love.

Nat doesn’t get paid for booking shows, but they’re emphatic that their hard work is rewarding. They feel driven to help other people get their music heard. They tell us that although booking shows was never something they had really planned on doing, they can’t seem to stop.

Quite often, Nat has even gone so far as to house touring artists, which is more difficult than it sounds. With everything they do for the community and their own music, Nat’s life can be pretty hectic, but they never take a break.

As a touring artist, they understand the inevitability and necessity of what they give back to others. A prolific musician, Nat has been on ten different tours to this day, and they have interesting stories about them all.

Nat tells us that the first tour they went on was terribly planned, consisting of only about two shows in ten days. They got in a fender bender and spent the remainder of the tour getting from place to place in a comically disfigured car. Down but not out, Nat got serious and told themselves that the next tour was going to be better. Sure enough, their next tour included one show every day for 10 days. They tell us that they were hesitant about the physical and mental implications of such a long and busy tour, but they went for it anyway and felt fantastic afterwards. For Nat, it’s all about pushing themselves to be the best they can possibly be and testing their limits, even if it means going overboard every now and then.

Nat attributes much of their success to Dan ABH at the lab, whom they hit it off with right away at their first open mic. They ended up recording Nat’s first full-length album when the Lab was in its salad days—it was just a room, and the studio was hardly a studio.

“Dan came into my life at the perfect point for him to have been the biggest influence,” they tell us. For Nat, Dan has been an idea giver and a strong motivator. He has encouraged them to step out of their comfort zone and try new things, helping them to learn and really succeed.

It is a common misconception that tours are only for highly successful bands. Touring is actually one of the best ways for up and coming artists to get their music heard. The strategy is to play as many venues as possible, get people talking, get people familiar with the artist, and then– hopefully –get a crowd that may come back. Since touring tends to cost more money than it yields, tours are huge investments, but they have the potential to pay off big time for the future of the band.

In Nat’s case, their touring has been well worth it. When they first started out, they were willing to play in a park just so they could get their music out there. It didn’t matter to them. Now they are at a point in their career where they can actually choose the venues they want to play, and that is a massive factor in their happiness and success.

More importantly, though, Nat says that one of the most rewarding aspects of touring for them personally it is to hear from their audience. “I’ll play a show and someone will come up to me and say, ‘Hey, that song really hit me. Thank you for doing that. I loved it!’ It’s such a nice feeling. I am hoping that people can attach to my music because I know I’m not the only one that goes through a hard time. It’s when you get the exact same feelings, that’s when it really hits me.”

Although they have inspired countless people with their music, they tell us that their own vision of a successful future is measured in distance. They dream to one day set foot in California and meet a stranger who can say, ‘Oh, I’ve heard of you!’ That, they say, is when they will truly feel accomplished. Knowing Nat, however, they probably won’t stop there. We predict that their ambitions will continue to grow alongside their music as they promote the ideals and ethics of safe spaces like the Lab All Ages and CD Cellar.