I sat down with Buick Audra over Zoom just ahead of her album release show in Nashville to talk about identity, memory, and the emotional journey behind her most personal work yet.
“I don’t want to go back there and lie.” Buick Audra is talking about Miami. It’s a city that shaped her, scarred her, and continues to color the work she makes to this very day. For the past decade, she hasn’t returned to her hometown. But it lingers in her songs, in her memories, and, most recently, in the glowing visuals projected onto her body in the music video for her new single, “It All Belonged to Me.”
The track is a highlight from Adult Child, her fourth solo record, and absolutely her most personal body of work to date. It’s a record rooted in estrangement, self-preservation, and the lifelong ache of trying to understand where you come from—and why it still holds you. “I wanted the song to be sweet, but also have a boundary built in,” she says. That boundary is both literal and emotional: a refusal to revisit the physical places that once held pain, and a quiet insistence on her right to shape the narrative now.
That balance defines Audra’s latest work: emotionally generous but sharply defined. Having spent years as one half of the heavy alt-rock duo Friendship Commanders, her solo work now swerves into more intimate terrain, though it’s not without a bit of grit. The record may carry the hallmarks of singer-songwriter tradition, but Audra’s voice and some intentional influences from her Miami heritage make it a diamond in the rough in a crowded Nashville scene.
Raised in Miami, seasoned in Boston, and now based in Nashville, Audra traces a sonic lineage shaped as much by Miami bass and R&B vocal stacks as it is by indie rock or Americana. “Freestyle, Miami bass—that’s how I learned to double vocals,” she says. “When I write now, I write color into song.” That chromatic instinct shows up in both her sonic layering and her visual work. The music video for “It All Belonged to Me” literally projects memories onto her skin. It’s a swirl of palms, pastel art deco, and light.
“When I write now, I write color into song.”
“For some reason, projecting it onto myself felt emotional,” she reflects. “It was cool to feel the Miami light changing over me.” Though some of the video is stock footage, it also includes personal photos, a nod to the complex territory between memory and myth. Audra wanted to capture the real Miami, not just the glossy fantasy most people associate with the city. “People say ‘Miami’ and they’re often talking about Miami Beach,” she notes. “I’m from Miami proper. Coconut Grove. Old Cutler. Places with banyan trees and tunnels of green.”
But Adult Child isn’t just about place. It’s about identity, especially the parts that remain unspoken. The title is a reference to a specific emotional experience—one Audra doesn’t explicitly define in interviews, but encourages listeners to explore.
“I didn’t know I was allowed to talk about this part of my life until recently,” she says. “But if something happened to me, it belongs to me. I can tell that side.”
That side includes the micro-moments of recovery, the patterns she catches herself repeating, the emotional labor of detangling from people who refuse to see her clearly. She’s open about her long-term involvement in Al-Anon, and how the language of healing shaped her perspective. Songs like “Questions for the Gods of Human Behavior” and “The Worst People Win” are windows into that process: unsentimental, observant, and often bitingly precise.
“There’s a fatigue that comes with trying to make someone understand you who just isn’t capable of it,” she says. “That song was me realizing I still fall into that trap. Even with all the work, all the knowledge, I still go back to those instincts.”
Some of the songs took years to finish. Others arrived almost fully formed, like “Yellow,” which was written mid-way through tracking vocals. “I thought the album was done. Then I wrote this in my head, built a drum loop from Jerry [Roe]’s patterns, and tracked the rest over it. Jerry didn’t even know what he was playing on until he heard the final version.”
The record took over six months to mix, due in part to a freak foot injury sustained by her longtime collaborator Kurt Ballou. That delay, though frustrating, gave Audra more time to sit with the record and what it meant to her.
She also found herself reevaluating the way she shows up for her own work. After years of feeling hesitant to promote her music, she recently dug her two Grammy Awards out of a shipping envelope and had them framed. “That was about stepping all the way into it,” she says. “If I’m going to tell the truth, I have to stop minimizing my own story.”
Still, the release process brings nerves. “I have a terrible time putting music out,” she admits. “Not because I don’t love it. I do. But because showing up for myself doesn’t come naturally. I’m not promoting me so much as I’m promoting the work. And the work deserves to exist.”
“I’m not promoting me so much as I’m promoting the work. And the work deserves to exist.”
Her upcoming album release show at The Basement in Nashville is a chance to bring Adult Child to life with a full band, including some players who helped shape the record. Notably, “Yellow” will make its live debut. It’s a performance she’s not quite sure how she’ll pull off yet. “We’ll see what happens,” she says with a laugh. “That’s part of the fun.”
Beyond the introspection, there’s still the matter of gear—something Audra lights up talking about. Her black Gibson Nighthawk is featured on nearly every track. “That guitar is the one I write on, so I wanted it to have a voice on the record too. It sounds like me.”
Whether she’s reminiscing about Miami radio stations or recommending her favorite venue in the city (a softball question for her to answer with The Basement, but Audra chooses to shine light on DRKMTTR, a DIY underground venue), Buick Audra exudes a grounded self-awareness. She may not feel like a typical Nashville artist, but she’s built a community there. A space where her work, her history, and her voice can all be heard on her own terms.
“There are a lot of us here doing something different,” she says. “You come to a place like this to bring what you are to it. And that’s what I’m doing.”
Buick Audra’s album release show for Adult Child takes place June 13 at The Basement in Nashville. Tickets are available here.
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