Recently one of our Nashville correspondents, Kat Dobay, sat down with the artist Purser, an emerging force in the local DIY scene. Below is their conversation:

Who are you? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am a songwriter, a multi-instrumentalist, a uh, a queer person. I’ve lived in Nashville since I was a child. But I started feeling really connected to it once I started making music in it. I don’t know, I’m someone who’s just enjoying making a lot of new connections by being a musician.

What is your music origin story?

So my first album I ever bought with my own money was *NSYNC, No Strings Attached at like a Barnes and Noble or somewhere, and that was. It was pivotal, I was like, oh, I’m a pop culture fiend. I need more of this. It was like candy. I grew up listening to whatever my parents listened to. Which was a lot of Joni Mitchell, Elton John and some Steely Dan. My dad loves Madonna, so listened to a little bit of Madonna growing up too.

What’re your songwriting origins? Did you pick up an instrument first or did you start writing first?

I was always writing songs around the house when I was a little child. I had one of those like Fisher Price cassette tape players that also had a microphone where you could like record stuff into it. And I would walk around the house as like a little baby and record myself and these little songs I made up. I remember writing like a song about how Satan wasn’t allowed to come to my birthday party.

They were all acapella compositions at the time, of course, but once I started developing fine motor skills I started taking piano lessons. That was in like first grade or something. I was sort of a piano student learning classical music all through high school. 

When I started putting my diary to music something cool started to happen. That was just sort of like a hobby for a while. And then, somewhere around in college, I was like, oh, maybe this is my main thing. And it has been ever since.

I learned like ukulele, like everybody else when I was in middle school. Then picked up guitar.

So, once you reached college, did you go into songwriting? Were you playing shows around town?

I went to college in a really, really small town in Virginia, and there was not much of an independent student music scene. So my friends and I started like a music venue with the school’s blessing in like one of the frat houses they’d reclaimed. It was in like a basement of an old frat house that the university owned. They supplied us with free coffee every weekend. And we would host like student songwriters and comedians and just anyone who pretty much needed a stage but didn’t have one.

At first I saw myself as more someone who wanted to help birth that scene. And then I was like, Oh wait, I could actually like start playing too. So those were like the first shows that I played in college. When I came back here, I started playing open mics.

How do you think living in Nashville has influenced your music?

The people, the songwriters I have encountered here that have directly influenced my writing. Write with an incredible amount of frankness and are kind of just willing to get up on a stage and fillet themselves alive in front of everybody, you know? I feel like there are so many of those types of songwriters in this town for some reason. The confidence coupled with the humility. The people I meet here are so candid.

Tell me about your first show.

The first time I ever played an original song for an audience of people that I remember, it was at an indoor farmer’s market basically in a church building. They had musicians shoved in the corner to play live music for all the people who were shopping around, like pottery or cross necklaces and stuff. I was like 12 playing piano and singing songs about lall the boys that I had crushes on in the corner of the room.

I remember being terrified and I also remember feeling very, very proud cuz they had put my name up behind me a screen or something. But I remember thinking “this is the first of so many of these”.

A year ago I started playing with the full band. I met a bunch of them just through like mutual friends like friends of friends of friends. I just sort of cherry-picked them.

There’s Simon Knutson on drums or Lucy Hasson also plays drums, depending on, who’s in town. Chris August’s on guitar and Keys and Peter Donnelley plays face and all of us. Everyone is contributing to the studio versions of the songs that we’re working on right now. So everyone is trading off doing production work, and basically playing all the instruments on it.

There’s one single that will come out in like November and then the second single is probably gonna come out in December.

The songs are both about driving around in cars and driving around Nashville. They’re about queer longing. The very specific feeling of like sitting in a car with the person you’re in love with and you’re at a stoplight that lasts way too long. And you’re thinking, “Is this the moment that I should tell them that I’m in love with them”? And then the light turns green.

How would you describe your music? 

I’ve been calling it cinematic indie folk. But it’s transforming to like more indie rock. 

Closing Thoughts?

I love making music with my friends. It’s the best thing ever. I’m just so grateful that Nashville exists, and especially that the queer creative side of Nashville exists. And I grew up here under the impression that there was not a queer community.

Follow Purser on Instagram.