Guitars and a car seat: Singer-songwriter on Alaska tour finds inspiration where music and motherhood intersect

Natalie Gelman launched her musical career with just the essentials — her voice and acoustic guitar — busking on New York City subway platforms as a teenager.

Over the years, Gelman’s music and her life have changed. Touring as a mother of a 22-month-old daughter with another baby due in the next month means the essentials consist of an entirely different set of gear. That includes multiple baby bags, a stroller and a car seat.

“And we have another bag that’s half merch and half diapers,” she said.

“Not dirty ones,” she quickly clarified.

Gelman is in the midst of a tour of Southcentral Alaska that will see her make nearly a dozen stops highlighted by a pair of performances this weekend at Salmonfest.

During her first tour in the state seven years ago, she made new friends and plenty of memories. She even made a trip to perform in Homer, a pilgrimage to the hometown of Jewel Kilcher, an artist she says she admires. Gelman also found out about Salmonfest, the annual musical gathering in Ninilchik, and started making plans to return to perform in the state.

“I just really loved being up here at that time,” she said. “Places stick with you. Sometimes I say I’m a touring singer-songwriter to fund my travel habits, but the audiences were really warm.”

After applying for a few years, she got a call last year to join the Salmonfest bill, but her daughter Emery was less than a year old at that point and it seemed like an inopportune time to tour. So when the festival extended the invite for the 2024 festival, Gelman jumped at the opportunity. Shortly after agreeing to perform, she found out she was pregnant with her second child. But that didn’t stop Gelman, Emery and husband Brent Florence from making the trip north from their home in Ojai, California.

Gelman toured deep into her first pregnancy and started booking shows from Talkeetna to the Kenai Peninsula and many points in between. She even had multiple days on the tour where she’s played twice.

And while she still has high expectations for quality of her performances, she admits her objectives are defined differently. She joked that sometimes survival is a reasonable goal.

“The bulk of the tour was booked during my second trimester,” she said “And now I’m deep into my third trimester where you’re so tired and it just overcomes you. Even if my husband’s taking (Emery) so I can get something done, I’m like, ‘Just kidding, I need to nap five minutes ago.’ ”

She said she’s had other musician friends who are parents in similar situations, and each is handling it differently.

“I‘m happy with the choices I’m making, but I’m also looking at (friends) and they’re touring more and they’re leaving their kids behind more,” she said. “I think there’s a part of me that would be more fulfilled doing that. But I think I’m also trying to, like, heal some of my childhood trauma by like, being a ‘good mom’ — and like, being there as much as possible.”

She said she’s used songwriting as a form of therapy to process a lot of her feelings about her own childhood. Now she looks at those songs — and her experience growing up — through a very different lens.

“Those songs, because they’re still a part of my set, take on new meaning,” she said.

She also thinks about how her daughter and her next child will experience joining her on tour. She said Emery has enjoyed visiting new places and generally enjoys musical endeavors, including her own. But that might not always be the case.

“You can make a plan, and then your kid and maybe she’s 8 or 10 and says, ‘I want to go to summer camp with my friends,’ ” Gelman said.

Playing the tour provokes plenty of challenges, from the aforementioned luggage situation to playing guitar in a much more rotund physical state than she’s used to.

“Sometimes I’ll play the wrong chords because my belly is in the way of what my finger and hands do,” she said. “The mechanism of my arms being in a different relationship to the guitar, in a way I wasn’t used to.”

Around two dozen people took in Gelman’s performance last week at Girdwood’s Alpenglow Coffeehouse. She was scheduled to play Thursday at The Writer’s Block Bookstore and Cafe and Friday at the Dirty Skillet in Hope. She also plays both a Saturday and Sunday set at Salmonfest.

Along the way, she said she’ll continue to enjoy the beauty of the state, which Florence described as “living inside a screensaver.”

“I think that people really look at like parenthood, motherhood especially, and being pregnant as this time where everything has to stop,” she said. “I feel like it’s just finding how it can work for you. And I know for myself I would not be happy if I wasn’t singing. I love singing, I love sharing stories, I love connecting with people.”