
Waiting to get into the men’s room at Mississippi Studios in Portland, Oregon, I noticed a tall (relative to me, anyway), attractive young lady with a guitar standing quietly by. She was soft-spoken, seemed kind of shy, and turned out she was also visiting from California. Based in Arcata at that time, Lila Nelson was playing an early set before Rachel Taylor Brown that Spring night in 2008, and was about to completely rip apart my initial impression of her.
Lila Nelson described herself to me as shy, even after I had already determined that she was anything but. One thing was for certain though – she was “on” the entire time during my visit to her home in April of ‘09, a year after I first encountered her in Portland. (more…)

