Perhaps “harmony” is the best way to describe the powerful music that flows from rising star Michelle Nixon and her band, Drive. “As far as music goes, the number one thing in my life has always been vocals. I mean I play different instruments . . . but my real instrument is my voice. I really love the harmony in the acoustic side of music,” Nixon emphatically states from her automobile, as she is enroute to a destination in her native eastern Virginia.

It is a hoot to talk with Nixon. She’s bubbly, funny, and you get the feeling she’d make a great girlfriend. She’s utterly unpretentious and there’s an honesty about her that comes through when she speaks - especially in regard to music. Like a lot of her bluegrass counterparts she started playing music at a very young age, fourteen to be exact. Although eastern Virginia is not the hotbed for bluegrass music that southwest Virginia is, she says there was never any doubt about the style of music she would play, although she did dabble briefly in traditional country music.

“I went to a bluegrass festival and really fell in love with the mesh of sound and with the people,” she says quickly, her voice rising as she speaks. “That really was the reason for me just performing straight bluegrass instead of doing the country thing with acoustic instruments. I just loved that harmony - that real sound.”


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