Starring Julia Cole. Photo by @jasonmyersphoto

FROM WRITING A BOOK AND SINGING THE ANTHEM AT EVERY GAME TO CREATING HER OWN UNIQUE STYLE OF COUNTRY

NASHVILLE SINCE 2012

Texas native Julia Cole has always had writing in her blood. “That’s what I thought I wanted to do,” she says. “I wrote a book in high school, I won poetry contests, that was really what I wanted to do.”

Though Julia has been playing piano since she was eight, it wasn’t until high school that music really took center stage for her. “My volleyball coaches and basketball coaches asked me to start doing the national anthem for my own games because they’d hear me sing on the bus or in the locker room,” she says.

She was quickly asked to start doing the anthems for all of her school’s teams. From there, she began singing not just at her high school, but all around Houston, for the Texans, the Astros, and even NASA.

“That’s when I realized that I can be in front of 75,000 people and sing just myself and a microphone and not be nervous,” she says. “It’s not that I don’t get nervous – when I ran track my stomach would be doing somersaults – so it’s definitely just what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Julia cut a fast path for Nashville, majoring in entrepreneurship at Vanderbilt. She dove into the music industry headfirst, taking on multiple internships and networking. “I knew that I knew nothing and I was like okay, I need to figure this out really quick,” she says.

She’s savvy about, and enjoys managing, both the business and artistic sides of her career. “You’ve got a product just like any other, you’ve got a target market just like any other, it’s exactly the same,” she says. “I’m such a nerd, I love Excel,” she continues, laughs.

“I don’t know how but I’m very combined left and right brain; I love math and I love writing music.”

Not only is she dexterous in her ability to design and build her career, her music itself is fresh and varied. She released and toured on music in college, and recently put out an acoustic mixtape of new songs. “I wrote those songs when I was in college,” she recalls of her early music. She decided she wanted to push her boundaries: “Let’s live a little bit and see what my songwriting’s really made of. This project is definitely one that digs a lot deeper and is a lot more honest. It’s the grown up me, not the college me.” Julia’s adept at mixing engaging lyrics with fresh instrumentals, and her versatility shows.

“When you’re an artist and a songwriter, you can’t stop, it’s not something you can just give up on,” she says, “because it happens to you. You’re walking somewhere and you’re just like, ‘Oh shit, that’s a song idea, I immediately have to write this down, I have to record this.’”

When she’s not writing, the stage is her favorite place to be. “Performing is the best rush ever,” she says. “You go a week without singing in front of a crowd and you’re like, ‘Man, I really want to be on the road again, I want to go meet some new people and play the songs.”

Connect with Julia on her website and press play on Spotify.

Follow her @juliacolemusic