Name: Miss Lauren Pratt
Instruments: Vocals, Guitar
From: Nashville
Genre: Singer/Songwriter
RIYL: Alison Krauss, Jennifer Knapp, Gregory Alan Isakov, Noah Gundersen
Management: Nathan Dohse, AGD Entertainment
Links: facebook / youtube / iTunes

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PRESS PHOTOS (credit: Laura Meek)

COVER ARTWORK

BIOGRAPHY
Miss Lauren Pratt is making her debut as a recording artist with a new studio album produced by Nick Bullock. She cut her teeth on piano, but it wasn’t until a guitar arrived via UPS one fateful summer day that she found her true love. “It was a surprise gift from my uncle, but it changed everything”, says Pratt. Citing influences such as James Taylor, Jennifer Knapp, and Alison Krauss, she taught herself fingerstyle guitar and folk songwriting. Lauren’s classical voice training in college led to a short foray into the world of opera, until she packed her bags and headed to Nashville.

At 13 years old, Central Floridian Lauren Pratt received a mysterious UPS package from New Hampshire one fateful summer day–inside, she found a guitar. “It was a surprise gift from my uncle, and it changed everything.” A year later, she wrote and performed her first song, and Pratt’s passion was ignited. Says Pratt:

It was at summer camp in front of 200+ kids in the middle of an orange grove in Central Florida. My parents got divorced when I was a toddler, and the ensuing years were full of ups and downs, and I wrote honestly about my experiences – I think all of that combined with the vulnerability of being a kid on stage alone playing to a crowd of other insecure vulnerable students struck a chord. I had kids coming up to me in tears after I shakily descended from the stage. It was then that I knew I had something to say, and it moved people.

Pratt pursued her college degree in the Mississippi Delta, studying opera performance, which became a central influence on her songwriting. “A college friend’s mom in Tunica county taught me to make fried green tomatoes. I watched her family hunt, and she and I would wander down roads lined with cotton and soybeans with the great Mississippi rolling by on the other side of the Levee.”

Now, Pratt’s experiences are finding expression. Influenced by artists like Nathaniel Rateliff, Noah Gundersen, Jennifer Knapp and Alison Krauss, she is preparing her first release, a 10-song debut album Days Like Tonight, produced by Nick Bullock and out on CD and digital formats on May 26th. Says Pratt, “I’m glad I’ve had time to live with the songs I wrote going into and leaving my early twenties. They are almost all exclusively about difficulties in life – not exactly a polka-dancing subject, but you have to have darkness to fully appreciate light.”