When Greg Holden raises his voice in song, unusual things happen.
He sings big and plenty boldly, but what is special, and what is actually kind of brave, is that Holden sings pretty. The Scottish-born singer-songwriter possesses a gorgeous swoon of a voice, and he isn’t afraid to use it. And it’s no mere confection, but a rarer vocal quality: openheartedness.
Holden had no idea he possessed this gift until he was 18 years old. His songs began, as a strange amount of things do, late at night, rather drunk, in a bar. He was working as a glass collector in a pub called The Roebuck in the town of Leyland in Northwest England. He’d stayed after work to drink with a buddy, and at some point a guy with a guitar began singing. Holden couldn’t help but notice how transfixed everyone in the place became.
“It was kind of an epiphany moment,” Holden said in an interview this week. “I saw him, and I saw them, and I saw their reaction, and I was like, ‘Shit, I need to learn how to do that.’”
A year later, he stood up at an open mike – a little drunk, admittedly – and sang his very own song. Things would never be the same.
He wandered to London a few years later with only his guitar and a growing number of songs. He and London did not agree with one another, but this was where his songs began to truly take off. Alone in his apartment, Holden began recording what he dubbed “The Living Room Series” in which he sang songs and put them on YouTube.
That’s when Holden began being heard.
His eighth YouTube was featured on the website’s front page and garnered 250,000 views in only a few days. The response was phenomenal. Beyond the sheer numbers, what gob smacked Holden were the comments and messages the song had generated. They weren’t just silly declarations of love – well, mostly not – but heartfelt, genuinely soulful communications. His music had connected.
“The thing that gets me, people reach out, and rather than just being, ‘Oh, you are cute,’ or ‘Oh, you are not cute,’ it’s not small talk – people are really reaching out and saying amazing things,” he said. “The private messages are even more intense. People really react to it, and it’s such a moving thing to read…Once I started getting people’s reactions, it was like, ‘Wow, maybe I’m doing something right.’”
A little more than a year ago, Holden followed his songs to the place where so many wandering folk singers must eventually go, New York City (“It was a Dylan thing,” Holden says). He found a community of like-minded souls at the Rockwood Music Hall and was discovered by star songstress Ingrid Michaelson, who brought Holden out on a national tour. He’d gone, in relatively short order, from singing in his living room to playing 1,500 seat theaters throughout the U.S.
And now the road goes on. His new “The Not My Living Room Series” has attracted more than a million views on YouTube, and last month he conducted an amazingly successful fundraising campaign on the website kickstarter.com in which his fans contributed $30,000 towards the making of a new record (his goal was $20,000, which was met, astonishingly, in one week).
Holden has come to L.A. in order to make what he believes will be the record of his life.
“This is the one,” Holden said. “This is the album I’ve been waiting to make….We’ve got the best musicians, the best producer, and we’re really just going for it. If this doesn’t work out, I’ll just find a bridge and jump off it.”
Greg Holden plays Live at the Lounge with Katie Costello Friday night. 8 p.m. See liveatthelounge.com for ticket info or www.gregholdenonline.com for more on his music. ER
