The uPlaya Blog

uPlaya recently caught up with Auddy Award-winner Nancy Casteele while on the road to international songwriter festivals in the southern United States. This Belgium singer and songwriter currently resides in Nashville, but will spend the next year busily traveling across America and Europe for concerts, music festivals, music video shoots, and performances on radio and television, all while writing and recording her next album. As she reminisces about riding her bike to the Conservatory of Kortrijk for evening music classes as an excited 12-year-old, her life-long passion for music seeps through the trained, sweet-as-honey voice …

uPlaya.com: Tell us about the Conservatory.

Nancy Casteele: When I was about 12, I really knew I wanted to make music, so I asked my parents if I could go to the Conservatory. My mom thought it was just something else I wanted to try out and it took me about a year to convince them to let me go. I started taking classes after school – I was in there four nights a week studying music and it was great! I had good results – after the first report came in, my parents could tell that I was serious about it.

uPlaya.com: Describe the moment you knew you would become a musician.

Nancy Casteele: There was absolutely a moment. It was a strange moment, I will never forget it in my life. One day I drove my bike through the little park on the way to a rehearsal for a band I was singing in. I looked at the rehearsal room and it was like an epiphany. It wasn’t just like, ‘I want to be a musician’, it was more like knowing. It’s like I knew that was going to be my future. And so far, so good.

uPlaya.com: What would you say your music is most known for?

Nancy Casteele: The one word that I hear over and over from people in an audience after I perform live is the word “refreshing”. That is how it strikes people.

uPlaya.com: Who/What is your inspiration?

Nancy Casteele: These days my inspiration is my father, whom I lost three years ago … Musically, I have many examples of who inspires me. When I was a little girl, I was crazy about Whitney Houston! These days I love Sting, Norah Jones … my taste in music is very wide. It goes all the way from Santana to Nat King Cole to Billy Holiday to Patsy Cline, and a whole lot in between!

uPlaya.com: Tell me about your most recent song, “All In One You.”

Nancy Casteele: I wrote the song with Craig Carr, who is a wonderful writer. A man I was working with took the song to Warner Brothers in Holland, and Warner Brothers loved it. They said go back and record it and produce it, and I ended up signing a record deal based upon that. They had not even heard me live, it was really that song that got me that record deal. They sent me to Budapest to film a video for the song. It was a great week. I learned so much and the song became the fastest climber of the charts in Holland. It opened many doors in Holland and Belgium, and eventually here because what I did over there helped me here.

uPlaya.com: Your songs have been amazingly successful on the HSS technology – three Platinums – Wow! And now, I am so excited to tell you that “All In One You” has scored an 8.2, so now you’ve got four Platinum Auddys!

Nancy Casteele: Oh wow that’s amazing! That’s awesome, thank you!

uPlaya.com: What can we expect in the future?

Nancy Casteele: Hopefully, a lot of live concerts. I would love to travel in a tour bus – one that I could take my dog with me, of course! I would love to perform live for audiences that know the words to my songs. That’s my hope.

uPlaya.com: Anything else you would like to share with your fans?

Nancy Casteele: I want to say that I feel extremely blessed to do what I do … I’m so lucky to touch people’s hearts somehow with what comes so naturally to me. I just want listeners to know that it’s because of people that have a passion for music and put energy in that passion that we get to do what we do. It’s a beautiful cycle, so thank you all.

Listen to Nancy Casteele’s Music

Check out the music video for Nancy’s latest, “All In One You”!

In May of 2009 Nancy signed with Huber Entertainment Group in Minneapolis and is recording under the Butterfly Label.