As a metaphor for his own career, Lau Noah arrives at the interview with his guitar on his shoulder and a bag, light with luggage but full of music that has enchanted top-level artists even though his name is not known to the general public. “If I may, I would say the right people know me.” She is referring to Jorge Drexler, Jacob Collier and Sílvia Pérez Cruz, some of the collaborators on A dos, the first album by this singer-songwriter from Reus based in New York who aspires to consolidate her career without haste, but without doubts about the path. to tour. “It is a wonderful way to start, that those who talk about you are good advocates of music, taste and talent.”
It is not entirely true that Laura Cailà, the real name of this 29-year-old self-taught artist, is a completely anonymous character. In 2019, she surprised everyone and everyone by becoming the first Catalan artist to participate in Tiny Desk concerts, the American public radio program that has become a leading musical prescriber in recent years. There she played five songs in Spanish, Catalan and English when she had barely begun to play the guitar in public, turning into a job a vocation that came to her as a child as a result of her need to explain stories about herself. “I have photos of me when I was two years old in which I am making up letters on paper, doodles that expressed this need that I have had since I was born.”
Without any record label to support her or sponsors in the world of music, Lau Noah became known through Instagram, where many of the artists who collaborated on the album found her. “They started following me, sending me messages; Then we made the effort to meet personally and get to know each other as human beings.” That’s how she met Drexler, who wrote her a private message to inquire about her music. She met Salvador Sobral years ago when she lived with other musicians in a house on the outskirts of Barcelona and the Portuguese artist was studying at the Taller de Músics. Ten years later, Sobral rediscovered her when he heard her at the Tiny Desk, and they met again.
Cinderella of music by taste and necessity, as a child Laura listened to the soundtracks of Disney movies in a house where there was always music. It was not until years later, in 2016, that she left for New York to get away from a complicated personal situation. “When I was little I had agoraphobia, and having overcome it made me feel like I shouldn’t stop, that’s why now I am a musician who tours the world.” In the Big Apple she began to play, first on the piano in a rock band, and then alone with the guitar in bars, small theaters and auditoriums. Meanwhile she worked whatever she could, as a waitress or as a babysitter, she lived on a wire from which she sometimes fell.
It was in one of these economic downturns that he came up with the common thread for the album. “To recover financially I went to Madrid, I slept on a friend’s couch, and it was there that I suddenly imagined two chairs looking at each other in an empty theater, and I thought it would be nice to do the same thing with my favorite artists. “I already knew Jacob, Salvador, Sílvia, Jorge, Ángeles, so I proposed it to them and it worked.”
With artists but no money, Laura took almost two years to record the album. She “worked in New York as a babysitter or whatever until she had enough money to buy a plane ticket and travel.” And wait, wait for the song partner to find the time to record. “These are people with huge careers, and they only had a couple of hours to record.” That’s why she traveled without knowing when they would meet, and she slept on friends’ couches after reserving the recording studio despite not being sure that the artist would show up. “I recorded with Jorge Drexler on June 8, and on the 9th I had reserved and paid for a studio and an AVE from Madrid to Barcelona at five in the morning without knowing if Sílvia Pérez would come. At seven she called me, she told me ‘I just heard the song, it’s so beautiful, let’s do it.’”
Did you get gray hair? “Many, it has been a constant act of faith, which is why it has been recorded in home studios, a bar in Madrid, Jacob’s room or Gaby Moreno’s dining room in Los Angeles, wherever and whenever.” An uncertainty that Laura has lived in for 10 years, unable to give up, which has given her unforgettable moments like her playing in front of 5,000 people at the Royal Albert Hall as the opening act for pianist Ben Folds. “You have 30 minutes to make them fall in love with you, build a coherent story good enough so that in the last song you can convince the audience to sing with you, and they say yes.”
The nine songs of A dos draw an intimate world of close voices, “the voices have been more important than the guitar,” he explains about some songs in which Cécile McLorin, winner of three Grammys, the mandolinist Chris Thile, the singer, have collaborated. Ángeles Toledano, as well as the singer-songwriter Gaby Moreno and the pianist Shai Maestro, with whom she played last year in Barcelona, ??a city she will visit again this year with “a good tour in the fall, I can’t say anything more.”
Perhaps most surprising is that Laura has been on this entire journey learning to play on her own, putting hours into the strings and exploring the instrument in her own way. She “sang a melody and tried to find the guitar notes that harmonized the song, which is called counterpoint.” In New York she tried to go to classes, she sent her music to guitarist Lionel Loueke, but the musician from Benin rejected her as a student, and invited her to play alongside him.
“My music is the result of personal exploration, jobs as a waitress or babysitter, trips to the middle of the Sahara or the jungle of Costa Rica make me a better singer and guitarist. These are my classes.” Nowadays she composes in the same way, “I don’t see chords and scales, only possibilities of notes, and I make note by note until the song ends”, step by step and without rest, another metaphor for her life.
