Today we’d like to introduce you to Nova Renay.
Nova, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I have photos of myself at the piano in diapers. Some of my earliest memories of music were watching mothers’ hands as she played Bach, Beethoven and Mozart on our grand piano. I would mimic her hand movements by learning how to see patterns quickly and using my ears to catch mistakes.
Being the child that was either at the piano or dancing to music in my bedroom, it wasn’t much of a surprise when, at just 8 years old, I started performing in musical theater productions at our local theater in Fort Worth, Texas. As a pre-teen, my whole life became music and acting. Morning piano lessons, a singing/ear training course at noon, afternoon rehearsals at the theater and then home in the evening writing and playing at our piano til dinner. My mom had pulled me out of school after 3rd grade due to being teased by boys and bullied by girls, so I was able to keep up with this schedule with a flexible homeschooling program.
One summer I took a film/tv acting workshop to expand my acting skills. This leads to booking a Dallas agent and a few years later when I was 13, a major LA agent took me on for their tv/film/commercial youth division. When my parents divorced later that year, my mom, brother and I packed the old Cadillac Deville til it was back-heavy, bottoming out with any small bump in the road as we drove westbound to Los Angeles for a new life and maximize the opportunities my LA agent could offer.
Day one in LA, my agent called with an audition. Later that day I was sitting in the lobby at Nickelodeon studios. I was called in with my cold-read slides in hand and stars in my eyes. After the read, they prompted me to sing 30 seconds of a song. Not expecting to have to sing, I began to sing the first song I knew all the words to, “All That Jazz” from the musical classic Chicago. That evening I got a call from my agent, telling me I made history in the agency– booking the first audition on the first day in LA. Acting took over my life as auditions kept coming in and I continued to take acting lessons 3-4 days a week to perfect my craft.
Has it been a smooth road?
A few years of this crazy schedule continued through my high school years. My agent, however, had started veering me in a more dramatic/feature film direction as I looked more like 18 or 19 years old when I was 15 and not booking the Nickelodeon/Disney parts anymore. One weekend I had an audition for a dramatic role and the scene was my character crying and finally telling her teacher that she had been raped. This was the last straw for me and I decided the joy of acting wasn’t there for me anymore. I wanted to do what made me happy and that’s what music had always been for me.
Fast forward to 18 years old, I moving into an LA apartment with a fellow student down the street from the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. I started in their full-time six months Independent Artist Program where we were to hone in all skills needed for being an artist; songwriting classes, producing lectures, vocal lessons, live performance workshops, how to use Photoshop and create a website, music business cores and much more. After graduating with a certificate, I then decided to continue my studies and get an associate degree from their Keyboard Institute of Technology division since piano had always been my main instrument besides vocals.
All through college I began building more on-stage experience enrolling in every showcase at school, booking my original rock band at every club on the Sunset and playing keys/bgv for already established pop/rock artists in town. It was also around this time that the chair of the keyboard program had recommended me for a role on Glee and was featured on their “Guilty Pleasures” episode as keyboardist/dancer.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
After graduating MI, I began working with an A&R team for a major label company. They were grooming me into a solo artist and prepping me/my music for a big artist debut through YouTube and other huge internet platforms.
This experience leads to my first big heart-ache. After over seven months of high-hopes and trust in this team, the contract didn’t go through and this team wasn’t taken on by the label… nor the teams’ artists. The next year and a half proceeded to be some of the darkest times I have experienced. I fell into depression, struggling with debilitating anxiety and a frenzy of self-hating/sabotaging thoughts.
I couldn’t listen to the radio without crying or sit at the piano for more than a few minutes without having a panic attack, still swimming in the idea “I wouldn’t have had to struggle… that was gonna be my break… I would’ve ‘made it’.”
How do you, personally, define success? What’s your criteria, the markers you’re looking out for, etc?
Finally coming to terms with this “failure” — which was really just an opportunity that didn’t work out and had nothing to do with me or my talents — I began to fall in love with music again and thrive on “the grind” every musician knows all too well in this industry. I started to write again. Some about the experience, but surprisingly to me also about love and happiness and hope in what is to come.
I began mixing these universal ideas with the lyrical symbolism of outer space as I started working with a new producer to create a unique electronic pop sound. I built an entire show around this idea of me being a purple alien goddess type figure into a high energy one-woman show featuring my original music and piano/vocal skills as well as visual production elements using fashion, stage props and projectors with self-produced video/visuals. I was building my brand and making a name for myself as She Nova.
I began finding ways to keep myself afloat financially and fund my solo project by playing keys/singing for already signed artists, top 40 bands and recording studio demo work. I had also found a place in the fashion industry, modeling for various fashion designers and music companies such as Sennheiser and Roland. At the same time, I was hired for Snapchat original series “Nail The Look” that got over 8 million views its first episode, and I’m still hosting with them currently.
At the beginning of this year (2018), I was referred by one of Fergie’s managers for a project called Parker Lane. It is a folk duo project created by Printz Board [writer, producer, musical director for Black Eyed Peas for 20+ years — writer of “Where Is The Love” etc.]. He was looking for a partner-in-crime to write, perform and record the original folk songs with. We met and we were instantly music soulmates. The first month we finished our collaborative EP “Replay” which was released May 31st, 2018 in LA, followed by a show/radio promo press week in New York City performing and selling out the penthouse of The Standard.
Being half of the Parker Lane duo has brought me back to my roots in a lot of ways and opened my eyes to my diversity as an artist/musician. We are @parkerlanemusic on social media if ya wanna catch a show AND my personal handle is @itsnovastar. The future is bright and I feel where I’ve come from is a huge part is where I have gotten and the amount of appreciation I have in my heart for being able to do what I love every single day.
The hustle continues to this day and I keep many irons in the fire because anything entertainment — performance or creative — is who I am.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
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