by Courtney Grimes

Baldwin pianist Nate Sallie is no stranger to perseverance. Growing up in Virginia Beach, Nate studied piano from a very early age, and continued to study music in college, along with being recruited for the school’s basketball team. At the tender age of 19, Nate was also being recruited by major Christian music industry record labels. Moving to Nashville, Nate began a tricky road of uncertainty, while the rug seemingly slipped out from under his feet.

Fighting his way through three unfulfilled record deals and many broken promises, Nate kept going. Knowing he was meant to perform, he continued to sing and compose music, until a fateful call from Curb Records landed him the record deal he had dreamed of. From being able to create musical masterpieces only in his mind, to recording them in the studio and taking them on the road, Nate slowly began to realize his dreams, and all the while he remained fully committed to his calling.

Now, Nate is one of Christian music’s fastest rising stars. Having completed a chart topping album and successful national tour, Nate is ready to go again, this time with even more enthusiasm and in a completely different direction. Before he hits the road again in January, he took some time to talk with Baldwin’s Courtney Grimes about being initiated into the music business, stripping down, and literally being found at the bottom of the barrel.

CG: Hey Nate, thanks for coming down here today.
NS: No problem! I was totally excited when you wanted to do the interview, because I love Baldwin so much. I’m really getting so much more back into piano now, and this interview could not have come at a more perfect time. It’s the interview I’ve been most excited about.

CG: What do you love about Baldwin?
NS: Oh, there’s no other piano like it. I wouldn’t play anything else. I started taking piano lessons when I was five. I had piano teachers from five all the way on to college. I started on a Baldwin piano. My parents bought a Baldwin upright as their very first piece of furniture. And in 1981 I started lessons when I was five years old. And I still play that exact same Baldwin upright. I even take that same piano that I grew up playing on tour with me. I haul it around to all my shows. It’s a little banged up, but it’s mine and it’s Baldwin and I love it. Baldwins rock.

CG: Your music has almost a classical element to it. Why is that?
NS: Well, my college didn’t offer jazz courses or anything else. It was all classical - Italian, German, French – vocally. And then everything was classical with piano. Classical, whether you played the trumpet, saxophone or whatever it was, it was all classical whatever it was. So after having that for four straight years, I was over it for a couple of years. Ok, I don’t want any classical music. So I started breaking into more Ben Folds kinda stuff. I was just killing the piano, just banging the heck out of the piano. But just in the past year and half it’s really come around to now I get excited about it. It sounds so great, I was listening to Josh Groban, who is a classical pianist, and it kind of inspired me.

CG: How did you move out of the classical realm and into more commercial songwriting?
NS: Well, it was all classical music from the get-go. So as far as the whole thing about structure… Once when I was 17, my dad took me to this music conference, and they had this tape series he bought for me. And it was “Teach Yourself How to Play by Ear.” That’s what it was called. It was a tape series and had a book and everything. I was like, “Man, I really want that.” I was 16 or 17 and all I could do was read music. And I could read it really well, I mean I’d played in all these competitions around the nation, and here and there, and done really well. But I was always amazed when I would see somebody sit down and play, and they didn’t have any music and they were just playing. And I thought, “How do you do that? How do you know where to go? How do you know how it works?” So I got these tapes and spent one summer listening to it, every day and every night. I taught myself all chord structures - I, IV, V, ii - all that good stuff. And since then, I love that. I was like, “I can do anything I want, I can go anywhere I want,” in terms of songwriting, you know. So I started writing more.

CG: What were the first kinds of songs that you wrote?
NS: Well, they were always really far out. They didn’t have any rhyme or reason to them. Everything an artist or band writes now, you want it to make it on the radio, you know? Before I started thinking, “Well, I gotta have a radio hit for the record label,” my melodies would just be crazy, just all over the place. People would just be like, “Wow, that’s really cool, that’s really amazing, where did you come up with that?” and it was just what would come out of me. And that’s actually how I got my first record deal.

I had this band in college, and they asked me to do this coffeehouse where they had signed artists come in and play every Friday night. Well, it wasn’t going over too well. There were about 20 people that would show up. And it held about 400 people. So one night my friends said, “Hey, why don’t you let Nate do one of these,” without me even knowing about it. And they were like, “Yeah, okay, let’s try it out.”

So we did it, and I didn’t know what to expect. But that was the first time that I took music that I had written, got my band together and had I had about 12, 13, 14 people up on stage, which was just ridiculous. I mean I had a stage that was about 10x10 and every square foot of it was packed. We actually had to extend the stage for my guitarist. And I had an upright piano in the middle. And it was the first time I played and the place was packed. It was standing room only. They took all the tables and chairs out, and so everybody loved it. And after that I made a tape and sent it into all these labels.

One of the artists I listened to growing up was Michael W. Smith, who is a great melody writer and plays the piano. I knew he was on Reunion Records so I sent this tape into Reunion. This was when I was about 19. And they were like, “Man, we love this!” And what they said had happened with my tape - they told me this later - was there was this huge bin of CDs that people had sent in from all over the country, and there was a new artist relations guy there, and my tape was all the way at the bottom. And his assistant came in and said, “Hey I’m gonna throw all these CDs out.” And he said, “Wait, let me look through them.” So he found my tape all the way at the bottom and he put it in, and the same time he put it in, the president of the label walked by the door, and said, “Hey, who is that, I love it!” And so that’s how I got my first deal.

I didn’t know anything about the music business at the time, I had never been to New York or L.A. or anything like that. I looked back at my eighth grade journal and I said I wanted to be a band director when I grew up. Well, I knew I wanted to do something in music. I guess me being the naive person I was at the time, and not knowing really how it works - how you get your foot in the door and what the process is, I was like, “Hey let’s go down to the studio and record a couple of songs. Everybody liked the show we did.” And my friends came down and I played through the songs I had written and I sent the tape out and boom, there ya go. That was it.

I came to Nashville for the first time, and within two months, I was only kind of getting settled in. You know, I thought I was real cool – “Hey I’m in Nashville.” But two months into it, I hadn’t even started recording, it was all brand new, they were still just going through the contractual things. I remember I was working at this temp job, and my contract getting faxed over to the temp job, and Reunion gave me a call the next day and said, “Hey, we’ve got bad news. Everybody at the label got fired today.” And I hadn’t even started recording yet. So that was sort of my initiation into the music business.

What was funny though, was that I didn’t get depressed. It didn’t really throw me for a loop. But Reunion said they still loved my music and passed it on to Mark Heimermann, who had produced Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith and all these people. And I had really wanted to work with him because he’s a piano guy also. But I thought, there’s no way I’m gonna get to work with him, because I’m just a new artist, and he doesn’t have time to start with a new artist, he’s doing all these big projects. So, Reunion said, “Hey there’s this guy Mark Heimermann who’s putting together a record label. And he heard your tape, and he loved it. He wants you to be his first artist.” So within a couple of weeks, I was on record deal number two.

I signed with Gravity Records, where I finally did record a little bit. We got about eight songs done and it was just an awesome experience. I learned so much about the studio, recording, being with this great producer and seeing how it all worked. I felt like I was back in school again, learning the recording side of things. But looking back, they didn’t have everything in line. They didn’t have distribution…they didn’t know how to put a record label together. They were really great on the production side, but not on the manufacturing side. They had something in their mind where they just wanted to hold out for the perfect thing, while I was just hanging there going, “Okay, when do you guys wanna do something?”

I was able to get out of that contract, because I had stuck with them longer than my contract. If there wasn’t a distribution deal in a certain time period, you’re allowed out of your contract. Two or three weeks later I got a call from Word Records and said that they were basically waiting for me to get out of my deal. Same story, said they loved my music, why don’t you sign with us?

CG: Were you getting so wary at this point?
NS: Oh yeah. Oh totally, because it was all paperwork and all talk. I just wanted to play and record and do something besides all this. So I went through a whole summer with them. I was in the books for the first time. They said, “Here’s your release date, here’s your producers….” The day I went in to sign my contract, I’m not lying to you, the day I went in to sign my contract, they put a freeze on signing all new artists because they got bought out by Warner Brothers, like, that week. I got all the way down to that point, and I remember the attorney calling me and saying, “Nate, I have bad news….” So that was the third time. By that time I wasn’t jaded in a bad way, but I was just… over it. And that was all a three-year process.

CG: Were you continuing to write or put together music and perform during all that time?
NS: Well, I wasn’t really performing out. I did a three-week high school tour with Gravity. But other than that, I was always writing, and that’s what kept all the labels interested because they knew I was always doing things, I was still visible, and they still heard the music on my demos. I got a couple cuts on other people’s CDs during this time also. But I still wasn’t doing my own thing.

So I didn’t sign with Word, and I got a call one day from Mike Curb from Curb Records and he said, “Hey Nate, I heard you didn’t sign with Word, what do you think about signing with us?” And at that point, I was like, “Oh my gosh, whatever. Yeah, sure Mike, that’s great,” and thinking that’s never gonna happen. Finally… it was the perfect place, there were a lot of different things as far as personally and growing and maturing through those three years, and looking back, there was a purpose in all that. It was meant to be. God was kind of getting me to the place I needed to be before he said, “Okay, now you’re ready.” And it was the right timing, and Curb has been amazing. They let you develop as an artist, and it’s not like, “Hey if you don’t have a platinum record, see ya later.” And it is the perfect place for me, they let you do your artistic thing, and do whatever you want like change direction whenever you want……as long as you have hit songs (joking). So I’ve been with them for over two years now and I’m actually in the studio right now working on CD number two.

CG: Tell me about this album.
NS: Well, this one I’m really excited about because on my first CD, I took a total left turn from what I’m used to. Because I was so burnt out at that time from people going, “What are you doing? Why did you go that direction, we loved your old stuff, and you were so creative…”

Check out Gibson.com next week for the Nate Sallie interview conclusion...