Being in the right place at the right time has its perks. For emerging Minnesota folk artist Nolen Sellwood, it has been about meeting the right people at the right time as well.

Sellwood has always been drawn to music but didn’t grow up in an overly musical household. (“My dad played trumpet in high school, that’s about it,” he says.) While a 10th grader at Prior Lake High School, Sellwood noticed his art teacher, Brian Perry, kept some guitars in the classroom. Sellwood found the instruments irresistible; his playing — to that point, however — was not. “I would incoherently be doing the worst stuff ever,” Sellwood recalls. “Mr. Perry was like, ‘All right — stop. This is what you have to do: Here’s an A chord, and a G chord…’ He was sort of the entry for me to start understanding guitar, because I don’t think I would have ever done it on my own. It really guided me towards evolving into making my own music.”

As a music fan, Sellwood was drawn to the music of ‘70s English singer-songwriters like Lesley Duncan and Nick Drake. Listen to the early single, “Humid Rain,” for example, and his influences are clear, yet he performs in a space uniquely his own.

And that’s where Sellwood’s meeting the right people again comes into play. His longtime friends, Sam Hovda and Owen Reinert Nash, were impressed enough by Sellwood’s original songs that they encouraged him to record them .

Sellwood then started reaching out to Twin Cities-area studios to price out recording three songs, just to have them. Eventually Sellwood connected with local musician and producer John Wright. On a phone call, Wright asked Sellwood what kind of music he was interested in recording. “I mentioned Nick Drake was one of my inspirations,” Sellwood says, “and he was like, ‘Wait, how old are you? Nick Drake?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, he’s awesome.’”

In Wright, Sellwood found a fellow Drake aficionado; Wright’s band, Lehto + Wright, frequently cover Drake in live sets and have recorded covers of Drake’s songs. By November 2021, Wright invited Sellwood into Signaturesound Recording studio in Minneapolis to put down some tracks. Soon Sellwood was playing in studio with Wright, lead guitarist Steve Lehto, and drummer Mario Dawson. “On a whim, I just wanted to record a couple of songs,” Sellwood marvels, “but now it’s kind of evolved into me discovering my life. This is a dream, and it’s just evolved into so much more than I could ever expect.”

Sellwood remains a pragmatist. He’s now a student at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and he insists his coursework comes first. Although he’s not majoring in music, he’s taking guitar classes, and he’s rehearsing frequently with other musicians as he prepares for an upcoming set at The Current’s Emerging Artists Showcase at the Duluth Masonic Temple on Saturday, Jan. 20. The showcase is curated by Minnesota musician Aby Wolf, who discovered Sellwood on an episode of PBS Backroads, a live music program featuring local musicians from Northern Minnesota.

Sellwood plans to release  his debut album, produced by Wright,  sometime in March on Wright’s New Folk Records. Sellwood’s  friends Hovda (trumpet, piano) and Reinert Nash (bass, percussion) also play on the album, and will support him live. “It’s such an amazing thing to be able to recruit your bestest of friends and give them an experience that they normally wouldn’t have had,” Sellwood says. “It’s just really a special thing for me.”

Looking even further out, Sellwood hopes to help grow the genre of folk music. Sellwood notes his peers tend only to listen to hip-hop and rock. “I just want to make more of a bigger impact into making folk more widely accepted, especially for the younger generation,” he says. “It’s so sensitive, it’s so raw, and it exposes you a lot … It’s supposed to give you solace if you’re having rough time. It’s supposed to let you know that other people are experiencing similar things and that you’re not alone. And I don’t think a lot of people get that, and I wish they did.”

It's a big aspiration. Fortunately, Sellwood is ambitious and confident, but not in an off-putting way. He says he’s still discovering his voice, and that he’s constantly learning and wanting to grow, eager to embrace whatever comes his way. “Life is the opportunities that you choose to go for,” he says. “And it may be hard. It may not be successful. But at the end of the day, what else is there to life?”

The Current’s Emerging Artists Showcase is Saturday, Jan. 20, at the Duluth Masonic Temple. Curated by Minnesota musician Aby Wolf, the event will feature performances by Nolen Sellwood and carisa.

External Link

Nolen Sellwood – official site