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Photo by Angela Kohler

Studio magic can make even a first-time recording artist sound polished. Not that Megan McCormick needs much help in that department. Besides writing and singing the songs on her debut, she also played every lick of lead guitar and most of the rhythm parts, too. As a child in a musical family she’d set her sights on a Nashville music career. And at 23 she’s already developed the skills and style of a veteran.

HONEST WORDS

Megan McCormick had a hard time mastering the classic jazz-pop number “I Wish You Love”—when she was ten, that is. You’d never know it now, though, as she glides through the chord changes without so much as a warm-up.

Between elementary school-age McCormick asking her grandfather to teach her that song and recording her album Honest Words, she’s gotten a lot better at making her guitar do what she wants it to. In the case of her moody original “Shiver,” the result is a fluid blend of playing, singing and songwriting.

“Lock me down in your heart
Lock me down in your heart
The sun never shines and it’s colder than ice when you
Lock me down in your heart”
(Megan McCormick – “Shiver”)

HOMESCHOOLING

As debut acts go, Idaho-born McCormick stands out because of her musical maturity. But, then, she didn’t just pick up her hollow-body guitar yesterday. She started getting serious about the instrument at the ripe old age of nine. And she was no loner in her household.

She jokes that she doesn’t hear quite as well now because of how close she got to music then. “I remember falling asleep inside my mom’s bass drum—she’s a drummer—like, when the family would set up and have a jam session and there’d be a pillow in the bass drum, and I would just lay there and listen to music and just be completely mesmerized.”

A family jam session could have included McCormick’s jazz- and western swing-playing grandparents, her guitarist dad or a small army of gifted aunts, uncles and cousins. And when the live-in-the-living room experience wasn’t enough, she’d satisfy her youthful musical appetite by helping herself to the adults’ music collections. Suffice it to say, nothing she found in there was on MTV at the time.

“Yeah,” says McCormick, “I wasn’t into anything, like, cool for my age group at all. I was into Gladys Knight and the Pips or Anita Baker or Sting, Bonnie Raitt those kinds of things, when it would’ve been cooler of me to listen to—I don’t know—like the Backstreet Boys or something. Not that, though.”

It wasn’t just what she listened to that stuck out—it was also how she listened. This was serious study through stereo speakers, note by note. And it helped her learn to play just as seriously, a skill she puts to use in an impressive minute-long rock guitar solo during her song “Drifting.”

GETTING TO WORK

At 16, McCormick lobbied her mom to let her test out of her final two years of high school and won a performance scholarship to East Tennessee State to pursue a new musical challenge–bluegrass. But it didn’t take long for invitations to tour and record with bluegrass, acoustic jazz and indie country bands to lure her away.

Photo by Karan Simpson

As good as those bands were, McCormick’s priorities shifted once she moved to Nashville. Playing music, she decided, just wasn’t the same as playing her music. She affirms, “To be coming back and creating the kind of music that I’ve been passionate about from the beginning feels really good, because it feels like I’m being true to myself.”

Once she returned to her first love—bluesy, sophisticated pop and rock—she met with a pleasant surprise: her songs interested people in the industry just as much as her playing. With that interest came the chance to record an album—an album that showcases her work with both pick and pen.

THINGS CHANGE

“And the world looks better now
With my feet on the ground…”
(Megan McCormick – “Things Change”)

As for what’s to come, McCormick says she can be patient. “I’m not concerned about this ‘let’s get famous, let’s get rich’ thing. It’s about sustaining a real career in a long term way. And that’s why I think that it just has to be, I think, slow and steady. And as long as I’m honest and genuine from the beginning I think that the slow and steady build hopefully will follow.”

It doesn’t hurt her prospects that she can do a lot of things well. Or that she’s found her thing. Then there’s the fact that she’s inclined, by nature and nurture, to share her enjoyment of playing music; first with her family, now with an audience of her own.