Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009

God's love fills music of Dove Award winner Mullen

Nicole C. Mullen speaks only one language — words of God's love that bring hope to people across racial, family and economic lines.

"We went to church with mostly African-Americans. We went to school with mostly whites," she said in a phone interview Wednesday from her home outside of Nashville. "I grew up with all hues of the rainbow. It became part of my world, and it's paid off every day. It's taught me how to communicate on many levels."

The award-winning singer/songwriter will be in concert Oct. 25 at the Gallo Center for the Arts in a show to benefit Healing Nations, a nonprofit organization that works with at-risk children and teens on Modesto's west side.

Mullen has won five Dove Awards, including two for song of the year — "On My Knees," made popular by Jaci Velasquez, and "Redeemer." She also provided the voice for Danielle Anderson on "VeggieTales."

The 40-something Mullen has been singing since she was 2. "I began singing with my family," she said. "It's something that's common in a black church. They'll put you up in the choir or on the stage and they'll say, 'Sing, baby, sing.' You look out at all those smiling faces and just sing.

"At age 12, I knew this is what I wanted to be. In high school, I went to the guidance counselor and said I wanted to be a singer. She said, 'You'll never be able to make it. What else do you want to do?' I told her I wanted to be a lawyer. She set it up so I followed one around for a day, and he turned to me and said, 'What do you really want to do? You don't want to be a lawyer.' I told him, 'I want to be a singer.' He told me to go home and do it.

"I know that only 2 percent make it. I decided, 'With God's help, I'll be part of that 2 percent.' "

She said when she was about 19, she felt as though no one was paying attention to her music, and she almost dropped the idea. Instead, she resolved to keep practicing and improving.

"I decided I was going to live with the expectation that one day, someone was going to call me," she said. "And if that day comes and I'm not prepared, shame on me."

In her 20s, she was singing backup with such top names as Michael W. Smith and the newsboys and working as a dancer/choreographer with Amy Grant. She recorded her first solo album at age 25 and won her first Dove Award seven years later.

Foremost, a songwriter

Her musical style, like her popularity, crosses several genres, from pop to ballads to rock to jazz. It all begins, she said, with her songwriting.

"I consider myself a songwriter before a singer, actually," she said. "I often say I sing because I've written the songs. It's my way of communicating the way I see the world, and the similarities between us."

Her songs gained depth after a three-year marriage to a husband who physically and emotionally abused her, she said. She didn't tell many people about the abuse "because my grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles had always been married forever. I didn't want to be a failure."

But her mother, when Mullen finally came clean about the abuse, told her, "I'd rather have a daughter who's alive and divorced than one who's dead and married. Get out of there now."

"I was full of hopelessness and despair," Mullen said. "I was thinking nothing good would ever come out of that. But I've written songs about it. I know what's it's like to take broken pieces and let God make them whole.

"Now my songs are more true and honest. I have a heart that has hope because of what I've gone through."