Lauren Alexander

Lauren Alexander always knew that she wanted to be a musician, but it wasn’t until years into her career that she realized exactly what kind of music she really wanted to make.
“I’ve been playing and writing since I was really young. I grew up around instruments and creative people,” says the 23-year-old singer/songwriter.Growing up in the small town of Bullard, Texas, she listened to everything from twangy country blues to soul-driven classic rock. Sheryl Crow and especially Stevie Nicks, her idol, were among her biggest musical influences.
Lauren’s father is the one who first put a guitar in her young hands and planted the seeds for her future career.
“We had a music room and my parents were totally fine with me making just a lot of terrible noise, super loud.”
With her parents’ unwavering support and years of practice, Lauren, was ready to take on the world at a young age. She began playing small gigs when she was just 12 years old.
MUSICAL JOURNEY
Lauren’s musical journey soon became a shared path. While in high school, she met her future husband, Richie Kindle. As their relationship grew closer, Richie switched from bass guitar to lead guitar and joined Lauren’s four-piece band.
Lauren says that it was at this point, that her style – an infusion of multiple genres – began to take shape.
“I was doing my own music and he (Richie) didn’t really play, aside from a little bass,” says Lauren. “About three years ago he started writing and playing guitar. With me growing up doing this, his perspective (on music) really helps me see things in a different way.”
The result is an album of 12 original songs called “Smoke Signals.”
“I’m so very excited to finally have some music to share!” Lauren wrote to her fans in a posting on her website last October.
The album is available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and other outlets. Videos of the band performing music from “Smoke Signals” are found on YouTube.
On her Facebook page, Lauren classifies their music as Americana rock. She says some songs have a folk, blues and country vibe and that others are harder to classify.
“I’m trying to figure out where we belong (in the world of music). We don’t fully belong with the country side or rock. We played a show with (the band) Savage Dog and with a guy just doing acoustic and people really seemed to like it.”
The band also has played before receptive audiences at the high-profile National Association of Music Merchants showcases in Tennessee and Los Angeles.
Lauren says that no matter where she goes, she’s always drawn back to East Texas to be with the people she loves and to make the music she loves. - Cory McCoy

Lauren Alexander is no strange face to the East Texas music scene. She has played at festivals, concert halls, underground shows, local television stations … if there’s a place for a musician to play in East Texas, chances are she’s played there.
All that changes this week, because the Lauren Alexander Band are heading to Nashville.
We shared with you an interview we did with Lauren last year not long after she returned home from Nashville after going through songwriting sessions with legendary country music songwriter Jim Collins.
Eight months later, she’s going back to the home of country music, but she’s not going to write this time. She’s going to play.
The four-piece Lauren Alexander Band is playing seven shows in eight days in Tennesee, six in Nashville and one in Memphis, starting Wednesday (Jan. 23).
This opportunity, Lauren said, is the first time her band will get to really tour, and they’re doing so with the dream – the dream of being “discovered.”
“It’s a lot of work, but we know that up there you’re making real connections. No matter where you play, there’s someone there who knows someone,” Lauren said Tuesday, hours before setting out on the road to their first show at Kudzu’s in Memphis.
The band also will play at The Honest Pint, Ri’chard’s Cafe, The National Underground, Tootsie’s World Famous Orchid Lounge, Belcourt Taps and The Rutledge.

Chris Vinn, Townsquare Media
Lauren booked all the shows herself, something which she said “makes you really appreciate booking agents. It’s a lot of work.”
“But it’s all worth it once you get up there and get to play,” said Lauren’s guitarist, Richie Kindle.
Lauren obviously wants her band to be seen by that one person who can make all their dreams come true, but simply gaining fans is priority No. 1.
“This is our first time to really go outside of East Texas, so we just want to gain new fans. We want to reach people who like the music and want to support us, whether it’s booking shows, signing us, buying a CD or even a like on Facebook.”
But, the most important date on the band’s tour schedule might just be a day where there’s no show scheduled at all.
That’s Monday night. And anyone who wants to make it in Nashville knows Monday nights are Open Mic Night at the historic Bluebird Cafe, where superstars’ careers have been launched on many an occasion.
“We’re just going to wing it and see what happens, because that’s what happens in Nashville,” Lauren said.
Lauren’s musical influences are eclectic, much like her music. But her approach is honest, and quite honestly, perfect for what Nashville needs these days. Lauren molds influences from the likes of Stevie Nicks, Kacey Musgraves and The Black Keys, to JB and the Moonshine Band and Miranda Lambert, into a musical style that many can appreciate.
And it all starts with her songwriting, a phenomenon Lauren had a hard time explaining except that when inspiration for a song comes, she drops what she is doing and focuses on just that until the song is done.
“It’s like when you dream … dreams tell your subconscious what to take from a particular situation or moment in your life,” Lauren said. “Songwriting to me is the same thing.” - Chase Colston, 101.5 KNUE January 22, 201

Anybody who’s been in the music business for a dozen years might expect a few worry wrinkles from wondering how to pay the bills, or perhaps a road-weary expression from spending so much time on the highways and back roads getting to and going home from gigs.

Not Lauren Alexander, though.

She’s 12 years into what gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson once described as “a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs,” and closed by saying, “There’s also a negative side.”

Alexander recently celebrated her 20th birthday, and still sees music as magical – which, despite what Thompson said – it is. Music is magical, yes; the business side, not always so except for the few who, for a while, perhaps for a whole career, grab onto the best of it.

“I started singing in church when I was eight years old, and my dad would play guitar,” she said. “My dad would book me for festivals and fairs and stuff, just like a fun little thing to do. Now it’s grown into something I couldn’t not do. I have to do it.”

She likes being able to share, through her songs, who she is.

“It’s really a magical thing for me; it’s hard to define,” she said.

“I try to not be forced. I like songs that just kinda write themselves,” Alexander said. “I just do it. If you think about it too hard, it can be forced, untrue, and not genuine. The song has to be genuine.”

Alexander describe her music as “Americana,” a somewhat nebulous term these days that originated as a catch-all word for American roots music: genuine country, folk, and blues often mixed with Southern rock. In her case, it’s most often folkie rock.

“It’s a blend of everything, including the country aspect that I grew up playing and listening to,” she said. “I love Janis Joplin and Sheryl Crow and Fleetwood Mac – and Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves; they are East Texas girls doing awesome. I’ve been compared to Miranda, and just this past weekend somebody compared me to Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane when we did a cover of ‘White Rabbit.’”

Alexander’s second album, Perfume and Gasoline, put three songs on the Texas Music Chart, and she’s shared stages with, among others, Josh Abbott, Aaron Watson, Easton Corbin, The Eli Young Band, Little Texas, JB and The Moonshine Band, Walt Wilkins, and The Bart Crow Band.

Her band – she plays guitar, harmonica, and “a little bit of mandolin,” with Richie Kindle (lead guitar, backing vocals), Jeff Odom (drums and other percussion), and Collin Anderson (bass) – does mostly originals with a mix of classic covers including songs by Neil Young, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, and others.

Generally, the band has at least one gig every weekend. Confirmed December gigs include December 7 at Half Moon Bar & Grill in Tyler, December 14 at Moore’s Store in Ben Wheeler, and December 29 at Charlie’s BackYard Bar in Marshall. She’s keeping some time open because she hopes to make it into the top four of the Recording Conservatory of Austin singer-songwriter competition during December.

Alexander has recorded four songs so far for her third album, which she hopes to release sometime in 2013.

She was born in and grew up in Bullard – her mom works for the City of Tyler and her dad builds swimming pools and runs sound for her – and she helps pay the bills with a day job as a Bullard police department secretary. (“They are so awesome to me if I need to take off,” she said.)

Now she’s thinking ahead, perhaps following the success of Lambert and Musgraves.

“I’m a pretty shy person in real life. I consider myself very awkward. It’s different being on stage; you can really become who you want to be if you are genuine. I want to be real.”

She traveled to Nashville in April and October, and hopes to move to that music business center in the middle of 2013.

“I just love Nashville. The first time we went, I got to be in a music video with my guitar player. We just walked onto the site, so I have a two-second clip.”

That’s just a tiny bit of the magic – and the hoped-for “overnight success” – for somebody who’s still so young and has been at it for a dozen years already.

- Tom Geddie, County Line Magazine 11/28/12