Jackson Grown: Lauren Pritchard
by Jon Mark Walls
FEATURED IN VOL 6, ISSUE 2: home and garden
Giving a s*** :
A world-class performer journeys from the country back roads to Broadway, finds a way to shine in the midst of dark times
It sits between a Walgreens and a mattress outlet. Hanging on the corner of a strip mall in a suburb of Washington, D.C., Jammin’ Java is an aspiring music venue with a coffee shop day job.
On a cold Friday night in February 2016, she was nervous. Having been on her latest tour for two months, the atmosphere was no more intimidating than the hundreds of stages she had performed on. From small bars in backroad towns of Tennessee and side street pubs in London to sold out Broadway performances in New York and late night appearances on Conan O’Brien, she had impressed fans with her edgy presentation and powerful, soul-filled voice.
Tonight she was scared.
Walking back on stage after her first set, she stood at her red keyboard and adjusted the mic. The intermission buzz of the hundred person crowd quieted under the purple stage lights. The suburban crowd of accountants, retail managers and dental hygienists took sips of their drinks, looked up and waited. Lauren took a deep breath.
Fidgeting slightly, she began to speak.
“I’ve never performed this song in front of an audience.” she said softly, the microphone and speakers betraying her.
She looked down at her feet and back at the crowd. “Fun fact about this song, I originally wrote it for Kelly Clarkson. When my manager heard it though he insisted that I sing it.”
In the moments that followed she began to explain, her voice rising and stretching awkwardly like a breakup conversation after a high school summer romance. Knowing it had to be done, but not really wanting the words to creep out.
After a minute she found her rhythm and, with a head-tilting, captivating sincerity, articulated the deep impact of mental health issues on a person’s life. She described what it meant for her as both a person and a performer and explained the origins of the song she was about to sing.
However one might choose to gauge her, Lauren Pritchard, who goes by the stage name LOLO, does not situate comfortably into the traditional West Tennessee templates assigned to a middle class white girl. The church choir, theatre class, prom-going standards simply don’t work.
Homeschooled from childhood, Lauren began building and refining an evident talent from an early age. Making good on a deal with her mother to let her go West if she showed a willingness to work hard, she left her deep Jackson, Tennessee roots at the age of 16 and moved to Los Angeles. Fate and friendship led her to sharing a home with Lisa Marie Presley.
“It’s one of those things that could never be planned. Not knowing who she was, I somehow made friends with Elvis’ granddaughter, Riley, through a friend of a friend of a friend one night,” Lauren recalled.
That teenage friendship, and the kindness shown by Presley, led to Lauren’s living with one of royal families of music in one of the best places to launch an entertainment career.
“You can’t plan that stuff. Though it’s certainly not easy and I have failed more than a few times, it should give a person reason to stress less when you realize how much is out of your control and what beautiful design we ultimately live in,” she continued.
The move would be her first step into a speed of light, big city journey. Building a trans-Atlantic profile, over the next decade and a half, she would make lives and music in both New York and London where she established herself as a world-class performer in Grammy and Tony award-winning Broadway productions such as Spring Awakening.
Signing recording deals with both Universal and Atlantic Records, she would launch chart topping albums including Wasted in Jackson and In Loving Memory of when I gave a s*** and play in front of crowds from the tens to the thousands across North America and Europe.
Her musical talent and presence on stage would stir a long list of critical acclaim in publications such as Rolling Stone and The New York Times as well as draw the consistent intrigue of People Magazine, Marie Claire and Entertainment Weekly which found more than enough space for her “surfer-punk, musical theater-loving, comic book-loving nerd” profile.
Lauren’s success on stage was deep and far reaching. So too, however, were the effects.
“By the end of 2014 I was really not doing well.” Lauren recounts. Continuing with her characteristic bluntness, “My mental health was garbage.”
“I had gotten to a place where I couldn't be in New York, the pace of the city was so unbelievably constant,” she said.
“To be honest, I needed to get out of the madness. Finally, it got to a point where within a few hours I just decided to get on a plane and fly back home.” Continuing, she conceded, “I needed to recover. The problem was that I didn’t really know how or necessarily from what”
The American Psychiatric Association defines depression as “a condition that causes feelings of extended or prolonged sadness and/or loss of interest in activities.” Of the 12 broad categories of mental illness listed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, depression is comparatively common.
More than 19 million adults in the US experience chronic depression every year (representing 8% of the total population). For those who suffer, it is as deep as it is widespread. “There were many times where I would feel 100% hopeless, like there was no way out”, Lauren remembered.
Though strong efforts have been made in recent years to bring attention to the issue of mental health, for most, it remains in the distant outskirts of the understood, the tidy or the proper.
“There is a sense that if you struggle, you are somehow weak, or crazy or just aren’t shaking it off. Whether they say it or not, most folks are thinking “Why don’t they just suck it up and get over it.’” Lauren said, having tried hard to do so.
“I know that for someone who is not directly or indirectly affected by a mental illness like depression, it's really difficult to imagine that it's not something you can just press a button or take a pill and be done with. It affects every messy corner of a person’s life and their family’s lives...and every imperfect nook of a society, an economy or a culture,” she said, demonstrating both strong knowledge and earnest understanding.
Despite the fact that mental illness affects ⅕ of Americans, and suicide, which is strongly linked to forms of mental illness, is the 10th leading cause of death in the US, the topic has failed to draw the attention and funding of more straightforward, understandable and well-marketed diseases.
Though each is rooted in deep tragedy, communities involved with diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer’s, breast cancer and leukemia have each succeeded in building brands and organizations with yearly donations in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Each disease in critical need of research and treatment, none as far-reaching, ambiguous, complex or misunderstood as mental illness.
Pausing for a moment, looking away and sitting back in her chair, she continued “Any life-threatening battle is hard. It’s even harder if your enemy is you. It's harder still if you aren’t given tools to fight it and are forced to fight it in the dark without the understanding of a community.”
*It is important to note the broad range and multiple levels of health effects and risks associated with mental illness such as significantly higher rates of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases as well as secondary and tertiary effects such as substance abuse, homelessness and crime. More information can be found here.
Having not left her parents’ home for weeks after she returned from New York in 2014, the intensity and haze of that latest bout of depression began to ease.
“I know it sounds overly simple, but I came around one day and told myself that there wasn’t anyone or anything that could get me out of it. As a starting point, I came to realize then that somehow it started with me acknowledging what I was dealing with.”
That morning after breakfast, she began to write. As with many of the most precious speeches, poems or musical pieces, it emerged quickly as if it had been there all along waiting to be seen, picked up and polished.
After 15 minutes of writing, “Shine” began to offer its first ray of light to Lauren and the millions that would hear it. It was the culmination of years of struggle, doubt and intense anxiety. Its beauty lay in its simplicity. Its power lay in its truth.
Reflecting on those first days of “Shine”, Lauren remembers, “One of the most impactful ways for someone to take a first step towards improving their mental health is to admit that there is an issue and, when they are ready, to find the courage to talk about it with the right people.”
“The easiest, clearest, most powerful way for me to speak is through music.” she continued. “It doesn’t change the fact however that, even through music, I find it extremely hard to communicate about my struggles. It’s just that the alternative of being alone and silent is scarier.”
Her lyrics are a beautiful story of what was, now is and what can be. It is a portrait of the diversity of both human beings and human struggles: some common and some less so, others temporary and contextual, a few very likely messy and long-term.
For Lauren, the writing and performance of “Shine” was necessary. It is an incredibly difficult, risky and inherently public acknowledgement of struggle, one that is far too often judged and misunderstood. It remains part of her healing.
In 2018 Lauren began reestablishing life in Jackson. Since that time she has begun investing in a community, like many others, which is deeply in need of learning what it needs and acting on what it has learned.
With the same passion and edginess she conveyed to crowds on international stages and across renowned pages, Lauren has worked actively to address a range of complex issues including local sex trafficking with the Scarlet Rope Project, racial, gender and LGBTQ+ equality with Equality Jackson , child hunger with RIFA and, of course, with mental health every time she takes the stage.
Communities are constellations of individuals. Both the community and the individual represent composites of a continually shifting, infinite scope of fears, hopes and abilities. Importantly, growth among people or within a person demands a tolerance for discomfort, a willingness to be challenged and the courage to not be afraid of being afraid.
Those are hard things to ask of anyone. Fortunately, for communities, there are people with the tenacity to take the stage and shine.
A native of Jackson, Jon Mark Walls is a social entrepreneur, lecturer, and speechwriter who is driven by the idea that better communication can lead to better politics. Having worked for the United Nations as well as various governments and NGOs, he co-founded GovFaces which aimed to improve interactive communication between citizens and representatives. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, Jon Mark has sought to blend traditional communications approaches with new technologies and develop ways of delivering ideas across all levels of society.
