Lauren Rose Thayer

Raised in rural Pennsylvania and rooted in Nashville, Lauren Rose Thayer writes modern-day country anthems that blur the boundaries between genre and geography.

It's a sound inspired by '90s country, late-'70s rock & roll, and contemporary Americana. Pulling those
influences together is a songwriter who's every bit as diverse as her sound: an opera-trained vocalist who
left a career as a schoolteacher in order to chase her dreams down south, one show at a time.

She makes her full-length debut with Going Somewhere. Full of autobiographical storytelling and honest
twang, the album finds Lauren breathing new life into the sounds that first inspired her as a young girl in
the Rust Belt. Years before she began playing nightly gigs on Nashville's honky-tonk circuit, she grew up
in a one-stoplight town outside of Pittsburgh, listening to artists like The Chicks, Reba, Shania Twain,
Brooks & Dunn, and Diamond Rio. "It was the '90s," she remembers, "and I was raised on the greatest
generation of country music." The music was inspiring, and Lauren became hooked. At six years old, she
even hopped onstage at a county fair to sing "Wide Open Spaces" and "Goodbye Earl" with a local
country band, setting in motion the career that would eventually take her to Tennessee and beyond.
From the start, country music was her bedrock. Her foundation. So when the Covid-19 pandemic brought
her world to a halt in 2020 — jeopardizing her new career as a music teacher along the way — Lauren
found herself going back to her roots, finding comfort in the music that had always been there. "I
remember feeling like everything around me was broken," she says. "It felt like I was hitting rock bottom,
and music was the only thing I had left." With nothing to lose, Lauren took a leap and wrote her first
song. Then she wrote another. Original music began pouring out of her, with Lauren strumming the
acoustic guitar she'd received in grade school and singing with a voice that had already earned her a
Masters degree in opera performance. Her new songs told universal stories of old relationships and fresh
starts, and once Covid restrictions began to lift across America, those songs became her one-way ticket to
Nashville, TN.

It was in Nashville that she began recording Going Somewhere, working with a team of collaborators like
producer Slice, award-winning acoustic guitarist Tim Galloway, and bassist Luis Espaillat. She embraced
the full range of her influences in the studio. "When we were recording 'Don't Let It Get To Your Head,' I
was channeling artists like Trick Pony and Gretchen Wilson, while Slice was thinking more along the
lines of Los Lobos," she says. "We just blended it all together, created a sound that felt like ours instead
of theirs." A similar push-and-pull can be heard on the atmospheric ballad "Lighthouse," whose
watercolor splashes of pedal steel and upright piano evoke artists like Bruce Hornsby and Restless Heart.
Elsewhere, Going Somewhere offers everything from feisty, electrified empowerment ("When You Said
Goodbye," which finds Lauren flourishing in the wake of a breakup) to hook-heavy pop/rock ("No
Strings," a show-stealing duet featuring Americana artist Tom Sless).

The album's autobiographical centerpiece, though, is "Hello My Name Is." It's a song that finds Lauren
Rose in motion, boldly reinventing herself without abandoning her past. "It's the bow that ties everything
together," she says of the track, which features fiddle from fellow solo artist Van Plating. "It's a
reintroduction to me as an artist. I'm paying tribute to my past, acknowledging where I am now, and
looking forward to where I'm going in the future."
"Hello, my name is going somewhere," she sings during the song's anthemic chorus. It's a big moment
from an artist who has dedicated herself to the long haul. Lauren Rose is, indeed, going somewhere. Her
debut album is just the latest stop on the journey.