NATASHA’S BIO
Natasha Stewart is a singer/songwriter hailing from Scotland, UK. She first became successful with a vocal cover of Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ on YouTube which brought her a loyal and loving fanbase.
Natasha has gone on to become a successful backing vocalist touring with established artists such as Ella Eyre, Rita Ora, Bebe Rexha, Martin Garrix and Fleur East.
Natasha continues to write her own songs whilst gaining invaluable experience performing around the globe.
WHAT DID I DO WITH NATASHA?
I met Natasha at The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) in Kilburn, London. We were both studying for the higher diploma and later the BA in Creative Musicianship.
It was on the BA Natasha put together her first project Dirty Nash. The original line-up of the band was Natasha Stewart – Vocals, Rikinder Panesar – Guitar, Seb Willis – Guitar, Ross Collier – Bass, Andrew Gallop – Drums & Percussion and Daniel Bond – Synths/Keys.
We started out playing together in a couple of our classes called Live Performance Workshops (LPW). In each weekly LPW session, we were given a popular song to deconstruct and perform in any style or genre of our choosing.
In the classes, we covered songs such as Soundgarden – Black Hole Sun, David Bowie – Life On Mar’s and Micheal Jackson – Bille Jean. I tried to record my LPW performances, but not always successfully but here’s a rendition of Bille Jean sung by Natasha joined by Oliver Killick and Tom Bailey on acoustic guitars.
This was a few months before Natasha decided to start her originals project Dirty Nash. We had some amazing teachers mentoring us during these lessons Chris Newland – Guitar, Chuck Sabo – Drums, John Currie – Bass and Barbara Amoakohene – Vocals.
Under the banner of DirtyNash, we played many gigs together in London at venues such as The Good Ship (Kilburn), Heroes (Kentish Town), Power’s Bar (Kilburn), Gladstonebury (Dollis Hill), The Roundhouse (Camden), The Shoreditch (Shoreditch), The Horse Hospital (Russel Square), Proud (Camden) The Paradise by Way of Kensal Rise (Kensal Rise) and we even judged and performed at a battle of the bands at Natasha’s old high school in Lanark near Glasgow, Scotland.
I remember the Lanark gig fondly as we didn’t get paid with money we got paid with a crate of beer each. Only in Scotland!
Natasha also worked hard on her social media presence. Her first success was on YouTube. She would regularly upload herself covering the latest or soon to be released chart-toppers and hit singles.
The first song she covered and went viral instantly was Adele – Someone Like You
We also got in on the social media action and did a full band cover of Jessie J – Who You Are. We recorded it in the front room of my flat on Kilburn High Road.
I used my electric drum kit and recorded 2 guitars and Natasha’s vocals on my laptop. As I had no idea what I was doing then I took the recording to my college and got some mixing tips in my audio production lessons.
It was also the first time I had done a Multicam recording. We recorded the performances using 2 or 3 small cameras around the room to capture the different angles. It was quite difficult when you don’t have tripods!
The track went on to get over 12,000 views on youtube (which I’m sure I have a screenshot of somewhere) but Natasha has taken the video down along with all her other videos for her rebranding under her current performing name. this is NA•MA•STE.
She went on to perform as a backing vocalist with established artists such as Ella Eyre, Rita Ora, Bebe Rexha, Martin Garrix and Fleur East. You can see Natasha with Ella Eyre at the top of this page.
Playing with Natasha at The Roundhouse