We all have those artists and songs we hear that strike the right chord and make us fall in love at first listen. They’re the reason we refresh social media pages, tour schedules, and Spotify profiles — because we can’t miss a single release. This is Love at First Listen — a series introducing you to the emerging, and established, artists with new music guaranteed to upgrade your playlist.
Calling all country music fans: You may know Nice Horse but get ready to meet Nice Horse 2.0. Once a four-piece band, members and musical sisters Brandi Sidoryk and Katie Rox reintroduced themselves as a duo at the start of the year. Originally bonding over a shared love of live music and sushi, the pair’s sonic yin and yang translate beautifully to a mix of feisty country anthems and vulnerable love songs, including the seven songs that make up Nice Horse’s first project in seven years.
Ahead of their self-titled album’s one-month anniversary, Love at First Listen caught up with Nice Horse’s Brandi and Katie to chat more about which songs brought the record together, what it’s like to see your face on a giant billboard, and where you can see the duo live this summer.
Your new, self-titled album is your first as a duo. I assume there was multiple reasons for this to be self-titled, but can you talk more about the decision behind the name and what this body of music represents to you?
Brandi: We’re different artists than we were seven years ago recording our first record. So, this really did feel like a Nice Horse 2.0 to us, and the idea of titling it ‘Nice Horse’ felt really natural.
When an album is years in the making, you may have written something three or four years ago, and now that it’s out, it’s taken on a different meaning. Has that happened with any song on this album?
Katie: When I wrote “Unfinished,” it was coming from something really personal. I’m finding it’s taking on a new life right now because our band used to be four and we went to two and I remember the time when that changed. Of course I went through a moment of like, are we making the right decision? Is this the time to just end it? Somebody really close to me said, “Your story’s not done yet. It’s not finished.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting because we have a song on the album called ‘Unfinished,’” so that’s how that song has continued to evolve for me.
Which song on the final track list was the first to make it on the album, and are there any that almost didn’t make the cut?
Katie: There’s hundreds that didn’t make it on the record! We recorded a few to begin with before we finally finished.
Brandi: We wrote “Til I Do” over six years ago, so that song is the matriarch of the record. It truly was a song that we felt was so special when we wrote it all those years ago, and the fact that we finally get to put it on this record feels like such a journey for that song in particular.
Amazon Music Canada commemorated the album’s release with a billboard in Yonge-Dundas Square. What did seeing it for the first time mean to each of you?
Katie: There’s hardly words. Like, to actually be larger than life on a giant billboard in the heart of Toronto… We have put years of work into this, and there’s so much more that goes into it than just the music. To get that recognition on such a giant level and for Amazon to see us and really believe in what we’re doing—so much so that they put us on that giant billboard—I mean, I was in tears.
Brandi: Yeah, it was so emotional. When I was moving to Toronto at 18, I lived on a farm and I had never been on public transit before. [The big city] was so new to me, and I still get butterflies in my stomach every time I’m flying into Toronto and I see the skyline. So, the fact that I got to be there in Toronto, which is a city that means so much to me, and see our faces up on that billboard with a record that I’m so proud that we’ve made and that we’ve really made through blood, sweat, and tears really means a lot.
You won a CCMA award for Video of the Year last year with your single “High School.” Can fans expect any music videos for their favourite songs from this album?
Katie: We are going to shoot a new music video so soon and we’re so excited about it. That’s all I can say!
Brandi: It is going to be an absolutely beautiful video. The only hint that I can give you is that Katie and I are both born and raised farm girls and there will be no public transit riding in this music video.
How involved are you both in the making of your music videos? Do you prefer to show up on set with everything ready to go or be involved from the beginning?
Katie: For our “Hot Mess” music video, we went to the director with a really strong vision of what it was going to be. Brandi also edited the whole “High School” music video. So, our music videos have always started with an idea that we then needed to find the person to help us bring to life. And because we got to luckily take home that [CCMA] award, I think it shows that we love to make music, but it turns out we also love to make music videos.
Brandi: I think the music videos are the extensions of the songs, and it’s just another way that we get to share with fans what we see the song as. Katie wrote the entire treatment for our next one!
Your single “Things I Wish I Didn’t Know” also hit Top 50 at Canadian country radio—an incredible feat for an independent act. Do you have any message for country audiences and stations who have supported Nice Horse over the years?
Katie: We hadn’t gone to radio in a very long time, and it’s scary because you want the songs to resonate, you want them to do well, and you want to feel like you’re really putting your heart out there and people are resonating with it. So, the stations that picked it up and featured us or made us regulars in their rotation and gave us a renewed sense of joy and energy, it’s a big thank you to them because that’s how people discover us. That song is a perfect example of something that we really believed in and I’m so glad that they did too.
Brandi: People gravitate to certain songs because they make them feel something or they relate to them, and that is incredibly special for us because this record is incredibly personal to us. It’s validating as an artist but also validating emotionally to have people come up to you or message you and say how much a song is impacting them because of something that’s going on in their lives. It then immediately feels relatable on a human level with stuff that we’ve been going through for the last four years.
The past couple of years have been quite a moment for women in country music, with the likes of Kacey Musgraves, Maddie & Tae, and our friends MacKenzie Porter and Teigen Gayse having great success. Can you share how you met and any advice you’d give to women trying to break into the industry?
Katie: Brandi had seen me playing a morning television show promoting one of my solo acoustic shows. She came out and walked over to the merch table at the end of the show and was like, “Hey, I’m Brandi. I think we should be friends! I’m a singer-songwriter too.” I loved her energy and vibe. She was just moving to Vancouver, and that’s where I live, so we stayed in touch and went for sushi at least once a week. Everything we were doing musically was so different that it never dawned on us that we should do something together. It was six years before we started Nice Horse. What’s funny is the thing that stuck—the thing that did well—was when we joined forces.
Brandi: I think that plays into the advice I would give young women who are looking to start this. I think there’s a lot of fear that you have to do something right away and it has to hit right away, but that’s not always the case. You’re going to have a lot of failures and that’s okay. Those failures are what brought Katie and I to this project. I think it’s just really sticking to it. People notice that.
Katie: I look at how Brandi and I were just in Nashville and we were hanging out with pretty much every other female solo artist or band that is down there. I find that Canadian country music is really good about that – everyone is really welcoming and encouraging of each other because there is room for everybody. I think it’s important for people to know that because I think TV sometimes shows it not to be that way, but that’s not true.
Now that the album is out, what do you have planned for the rest of the year?
Brandi: We just announced that we’re playing Sunfest on Vancouver Island. We’ve already announced that we’re playing Cavendish Beach Music Festival on the other side of Canada and that we’re playing CMA Fest in Nashville.
Katie: It’s going to be a busy summer, which is really exciting because it will be our first year playing live as a duo. So, to have this record and to be playing together, it’s a whole summer of a new side of Nice Horse that is an extension of the one that we were, and it’s going to be great.
Which songs are you most excited to perform live?
Brandi: A lot of our true-blue Nice Horse fans who have been with us for a long time have already heard some of the songs live because we test songs before we put them out. So, we’ll be playing all of the new songs on the record this summer. And who knows, maybe we’ll pull out some new ones to test as well for upcoming records!
