"I had a moment last year, when I played one UK show, that brought everything back down to earth for me," Nadia Reid says.
She is seated at a retro, red formica table with mismatched chairs in the far-corner of Morning Magpie, a quirky, popular, Stuart St, Dunedin, cafe.
It is publicity season for the Dunedin singer-songwriter who is about to release her much-anticipated third album.
This is her second interview since noon. An uneaten bagel, a barely-touched bowl of chips and two empty coffee cups sit in front of her. There are more interviews to come.
"I was playing at this church in a town called Kenilworth," Reid says of the sold-out, solo show, 150km northwest of London.
"There were these two guys there. I just caught them out of the corner of my eye as I was walking backstage before the show."
The pair, says Reid, looked nothing like the usual, contemporary folk music crowd.
"I thought, why are these guys here in this church in the middle of nowhere, waiting patiently to watch this sort-of-sad, New Zealand songwriter?"
It is not the end of the story. And this is not the point of her recollection, but a sold-out show in an out-of-the-way market town on the other side of the world says plenty about Reid’s reach. The 28-year-old singer-songwriter from Port Chalmers, who five years ago had not released an album, now has two to her name as well as emphatic endorsements in global music magazines Mojo and Uncut, a live TV appearance in the United Kingdom on Later ... With Jools Holland and sell-out shows here and on distant shores.
Her third album, Out of my Province, to be released on Friday, is poised to extend that reach considerably.
Out of my Province will be a revelation to many. It is distinctly Reid, for sure. Recognisable, but not the same.
The title of the album is a quote by one of Reid’s favourite authors, Janet Frame. The celebrated New Zealand writer, in response to being asked how she felt about being called one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, said "That question doesn't reach me. It's out of my province".
Reid saw the interview on a documentary and scribbled the phrase in the notebook she always carries. In time it became the album title. For Frame it was a response to an intrusion from beyond her frame of reference. For Reid it referenced songs written while outside her comfort zone. In both cases, it is about interactions with the unfamiliar.
The 10-tune album of what Reid calls "travelling songs, road songs" is undeniably the musical birth-child of songs such as Reach my destination and The way it goes, on her second album Preservation, and the granddaughter of ballads like Call the days as they were known, from her debut Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs. But this new album feels more polished, lush and mature, with greater diversity and depth.
Some of the difference is to be found in Reid’s new producers, Trey Pollard and Matthew E White, of Spacebomb Records, based in Richmond, Virginia.
"I knew I wanted horns. I knew I wanted strings. Other than that I really struggled to put it into words," Reid says.
"Trey developed this plan for the record ... He’s so musically literate, he’s possibly a musical genius.
"I guess that is the difference between this and my other two records; it does feel more restrained, or a bit more considered, perhaps ... And I think that came with the luxury of having more time and a more considered process."
Part of the magic is also the concept of "serving the song".
"Most of what you hear is the players knowing the song and getting into the right head-space to serve the song.
"That’s a big thing in my live band. It’s not about people playing as much as they can, or being the loudest or playing the most notes. Our priority is always ‘What serves the song the best?’. If that is just guitar and voice and an organ, then that is what it will be."
A THIRD, critical ingredient is undoubtedly Reid’s growing passion for pushing boundaries, for stretching and growth.
"Progression is key. I want to always be changing," she says, taking a bite of a chip that went cold some time ago.
It has geographical implications.
"I don’t want to stay in one place for too long. I think I need to have a really varied life in which I’m coming into contact with lots of different kinds of people. I don’t think I could stay in Dunedin and continue to do this. I think I have to leave New Zealand. I need to come and go."
And musical consequences too.
"I would love to continue down that path of exploring all sorts of instruments and, I guess, also moving away from being that folk artist as well. But I think that’s not so much a conscious thing as an organic progression.
"I don’t really think this record is a folk record."
That from the musician Billboard hailed in 2017 as the singer with the "otherworldly voice" who was "saving folk music".
Out of my Province was actually completed a year ago, Reid says.
Complex record deal negotiations, however, delayed its release.
The multi-album deal was worth the wait, Reid says. But by then it was not the right time to release the album and the wait was extended.
That has made it a difficult year for an artist physically, musically and personally committed to movement.
During the hiatus, Reid and her band played several New Zealand arts festivals. However, by the time they had played the Tauranga festival, in October, they were itching to move on.
"The band and I acknowledged this was the last time; that the next time we played it would be new material."
Treading water can produce a nervous tension, Reid says.
"Do you know that feeling just before a big wave?
"I get the sense that ‘Oh, nothing is happening ... I’m going to have to have a Plan B’."
That feeling seized Reid in the lull before Preservation was released. Plan B was enrolling in an English major at the University of Otago. But studies fell by the way when the hugely positive reaction to the album led to national and international tours.
"It happened with this album too. It happened about a month ago. I was thinking ‘Oh my goodness, this might not actually ... you know," she says with a laugh.
The likelihood of that eventuality is extremely remote. The reaction to singles from Out of my Province already released — Best thing, Get the devil out and Oh Canada — has been strongly positive. Several of the songs are likely to be on heavy rotation in personal playlists and on the airwaves.
A middle-aged woman, the mother of a friend, interrupts from a couple of cafe tables away.
"He just rang and I told him ‘I’ll tell you who I can see across the room’," the woman relays to Reid.
"I’ll see him in a couple of days, I think," Reid replies.
She finds it hard to unpack the meaning of her songs, including Get the devil out, which has already been listened to more than 157,000 times on Spotify.
It begins with the enigmatic lines,
I gotta get the devil out of me
I’m searching for the permanence
So that I can breathe again.
"The main thing I could say about that song is that, at the time I was becoming really attached to music.
"I was becoming very grateful for its presence."
If she had to choose one song on the new album simply for its music, Reid would pick the lilting and soaring, guitar-led Best thing.
The first hearing of the completed song was an emotional, goosebump-raising experience.
"I hear the song as a separate entity serving a purpose that isn’t about me being great ... it’s not an ego thing.
"I don’t know. I’m probably going down a bit of a funny rabbit hole ... It’s almost as though I don’t feel responsible for it in a way. But it is there and it will hopefully serve me as much as it will serve others."
And if Reid had to choose one song from Out of my province just for the lyrics it would be Heart to ride which opens with the lines,
I keep hearing you on the radio
Take it as some sort of sign, you know
You were getting sun-kissed on the West Coast
No longer anyone’s
Anybody’s to own.
"I feel that as a song, lyrically and the structure, it just feels quite complete," she says
"There is nothing in there that I would want to be different."
CREATIVITY has always been a significant element of Reid’s make-up.
One strong memory from her childhood in Port Chalmers is of regularly roaming hilltop Meridian St, playing imaginative games with "a gaggle of street friends".
"I recall having a very strong imagination, having a creative mind that I feel is becoming duller and duller.
"I almost think my creativity was at its height as a child. I would get a lot of visions and make up stories."
There is no specific song-writing process Reid employs.
"I think it is incredibly mysterious. I think the more I try to find out about it, the less likely it is to work."
She writes a lot. And needs time alone.
"I’ve taken myself up to a place in Kakanui a couple of times, where it is just perfect; the right amount of solitude. Not too alone that I’m freaked out, a happy medium."
This year, she is likely to get a song-writing studio.
"I want to start treating it more the way a painter would treat it. Up until now, I’ve just done things in my bedroom, or hotel rooms or rented cabins."
There will be little use for a studio in the immediate future.
An album release show each in Christchurch and Wellington, and four in Auckland, will be quickly followed by seven shows in the UK and nine in Western Europe.
Nothing is slated for Dunedin, not publicly.
"It’s all under wraps. I’m very protective of Dunedin, because my annual Christmas show is in Port Chalmers. I don’t want to ..." her voice trails off.
Sitting at this table, in the lull before the storm that will inevitably hit on Friday, reviewing the past several years and peering at a partially visible future, Reid says the dominant emotion is one of gratefulness.
"It’s nothing I set out to do. It’s just happened. It’s really an incredible gift to ...", she pauses in search of the right words, "... to feel such a deep sense of purpose, which I think a lot of people are searching for".
That sense of purpose hit home at the end of the show in Kenilworth, in the middle of a session of autograph signing.
One of the two incongruous-looking men, who Reid had noticed before the show, approached with a request for a photo with her.
"He said to me, ‘We’ve driven two and a-half hours and I’m such a big fan’.
"Then he added, ‘My wife died two years ago. Your second album was the soundtrack to my journey at that point’.
"And I just thought, you know, if I’m able to provide any sort of comfort, whatever, to this dude who kind of looked like he should have been at a metal gig ... If I am meaningful to him in that capacity then that’s it; I’m just going to keep doing this.
"In my times of feeling, what’s the point, this is self-indulgent, who’s going to care what I have to say, I just take myself back to that.
"It doesn’t get much more meaningful than that."
