Kansas native who has written several No. 1 country songs is now taking the stage

This week, Nicolle Galyon gets one more chance to live the life of a country star.

The Sterling native will pack her kids, 9-year-old Charlie Jo and 8-year-old Ford, on a tour bus in Nashville and they’ll head to the Intrust Bank Arena in Wichita, where she’s opening for country singer Walker Hayes on Thursday night.

“I’m really excited because my kids are fascinated with the idea of being on a tour bus,” she said with a laugh. “It’s funny. My main motivation for doing these shows was to turn it into a family trip, where we’d get to ride the tour bus and the kids would get to see me on stage for the weekend.”

After the Wichita show closes down, they’re headed to the Denver area, where Galyon will open for Hayes at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

“I was elated. If I only have to do one weekend, that’s the one-two punch,” she said from her home in Nashville. “Getting to play Red Rocks for me, somebody who doesn’t have the dream of performing, I know how special that venue is. I’ve gone to so many shows there and stood side-stage and know that’s something I will remember and be so proud to say I did when I’m 80.”

Galyon, who has co-written dozens of country hits, got her own time in the spotlight last year with the release of her autobiographical album, “firstborn.”

“It did what I hoped it would do, which is to exist,” she said.

The album release got her exposure on the “Today” show, a night of singing her own songs at the Grand Ole Opry and a full-band performance of her album at the Country Music Hall of Fame.

“It brought me a lot of first-time things I’d never done before, which is kind of rare when you’re 20 years into your journey and doing so many things for the first time,” she said.

The album brought critical acclaim – Forbes called it “candid and beautiful,” People said it was a “musical masterpiece” and the Tennessean review said it was “a star-making statement all her own” – but sales were dismal and Galyon said the experience taught her a lesson.

“What I learned through the whole process of quote-unquote being an artist last year was that it’s not what I want to do long term,” she said. “I love creating and I love making music, but I don’t like performing music.

“I have a lot of anxiety – it feels unnatural for me. That’s such a necessary piece to have an artist career,” Galyon continued. “Honestly, some of the worst days I had last year were doing some of the things that other people dream of doing as artists. I had so much anxiety about performing on TV, putting on a show. Honestly, all of the attention that was around me about the record drained me. By the end of the year, I was just ready to be done. I was proud of what we had done, but I was ready to return back to being a creator and not the center of attention.”

One of the first calls she got when the record was released was from Walker Hayes, known for country hits including “Fancy Like,” “AA” and “You Broke Up with Me.”

He invited her to be his opening act throughout his 2023 tour, and she accepted the offer for only her “hometown show” in Wichita and Red Rocks.

“So I’m willing to do it for a weekend, but it’s for different reasons than to promote my album,” she said.

Behind the scenes

Although Galyon has flirted with performing before, including a stint on TV’s “The Voice” in 2012, she said she’s happier behind the scenes.

“The songwriting community is such a niche subculture that no one really knows about,” she said. “Some of the best singers and creatives are songwriters and they don’t really want to be on stage. They get busy writing for other people, and it’s very common for songwriters to say they’ll do a project one day.”

But Galyon said she did the other songwriters one better by putting out her own album.

“I’m still waiting for some of my songwriting heroes to make a record,” she said. “For me, the goal was to do it and not look back at 80 years and wish that I had or get to an age where it didn’t make sense for me to do it anymore.”

Galyon and her family split their time between Nashville and Kansas, getting to Sterling on summers and holidays, as well as spending a year and a half there during the pandemic.

The 38-year-old moved to Nashville in 2002 to study music business at Belmont University. She’s been married for 15 years to songwriter Rodney Clawson, who has an arsenal of his own hits, including “Amarillo Sky” for Jason Aldean, “I Saw God Today” for George Strait and “Sure Be Cool if You Did” for Blake Shelton.

When she and her husband became serious, Galyon said, they were intentional about not writing songs together.

“We kind of set that precedent and we blinked, and 10 years had gone by,” she said.

They worked together for a song on “firstborn.”

“It was such a fulfilling experience being able to write with him creatively, but also personally,” Galyon said. “He knew me, and he knew my life so well it was just a natural.”

Now, she says, in the past three months they’ve written more songs together than in the first 10 years of their marriage.

“It’s a new chapter for us for sure,” she said.

The songwriting process

Galyon writes her music with a variety of collaborators during sessions in Nashville.

“A staff writer on Music Row is usually booked three to five days a week,” she said. “You’re booked at 11 a.m. and you show up with two co-writers and sometimes that’s an artist or a producer, but every room is different. You come in, catch up, do some small talk. Most of us have ideas written down and we start throwing out ideas. But other days you’ll just be talking, and someone will say something in passing and it’s like, ‘Oh, I think that’s a song.’ You kind of see what you can get on the fly.”

As a lyricist, Galyon said, sometimes she will come to the writing session with just a word or phrase that brainstorms into a song. That’s the way with “Automatic,” a 2014 hit for Miranda Lambert.

“When we walked in that morning with Miranda the conversation got to how long it took people to make it in the music business,” she said. “We kind of merged the ideas in that conversation.”

Galyon said she doesn’t have any idea whether the songs she’s writing will be hits but uses her own yardstick – whether she wants to hear the song again.

“You would think you’d want to listen to everything you write, but it’s not true,” she said. “A lot of times you get to the end of the song and you have the recording on the phone in your car and you get 10 seconds in and say, ‘I don’t think we nailed it.’ It’s the songs for me, in hindsight, that I couldn’t wait to listen to after they’ve been written.

“If it matches my taste, it usually matches someone else’s taste,” Galyon added.

An example is “Tequila,” a 2018 hit for country duo Dan + Shay.

“We knew we liked listening to it, but we texted each other months after we wrote it and said, ‘This is really good, right?’” she recalled. “Something being good and something being successful are two different things, and I never would have told you that would be the biggest song of my career.”

For the second year in a row, Galyon is nominated for songwriter of the year by the Academy of Country Music Awards, which will be presented on May 11. She received her second Triple Play Award from the Country Music Association in March for writing three No. 1 songs last year, “Gone,” “Half of My Hometown” and “Thought You Should Know.”

Galyon is entrenched in being behind the scenes this year, primarily getting her own all-female publishing house, independent record label and management group called Songs & Daughters off the ground. One of her first acts, Hailey Whitters, had just cracked country’s Top 20 and another performer, Lauren Watkins, just released music online. Galyon has recently signed Kimberly Perry, best known for her work with the country sibling trio The Band Perry in the 2010s.

“That’s really going to be my focus for most of this year,” she said.

Her concert at Intrust Arena will include songs from “firstborn” as well as her version of her hits “All the Pretty Girls” and “Boy.”

“Obviously when a female sings it, that changes it enough on the content of the song,” she said. On “Boy,” “it takes on a different meaning when it comes from a mom instead of a dad.”

WALKER HAYES, WITH CHRIS LANE AND NICOLLE GALYON

When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 4

Where: Intrust Bank Arena

Tickets: $35-$75, from selectaseat.com

HIT LIST

Here are some of the country hits co-written by Nicolle Galyon:

“All the Pretty Girls,” Kenny Chesney

“Automatic,” Miranda Lambert

“Boy,” Lee Brice

“Coming Home,” Keith Urban

“Gone,” Dierks Bentley

“Half of My Hometown,” Kelsea Ballerini

“Heart Break,” Lady A

“Minimum Wage,” Blake Shelton

“Smooth,” Florida Georgia Line

“Tequila,” Dan + Shay

“Thought You Should Know,” Morgan Wallen

“We Were Us,” Keith Urban and Miranda Lambert