Country and bluegrass singer Nell Robinson (her real name is Hilary Perkins -- she chose the name of her grandmother to use in her performing and recording career) took a long time to decide that music was her true calling. The daughter of a career Air Force father, she endured family moves frequently, and the closest thing to a steady home for her was the small rural town in lower Alabama where her grandmothers, Nell Robinson and Thelma Bates, lived. Perkins did some singing while she was in elementary school, but didn’t start performing publicly until she was 46 years old, but then she made up for lost ground, quickly becoming a fixture on the local San Francisco bluegrass scene with her band Red Level. She self-released an album, Loango, on her own Nell Robinson Music imprint in 2009, following it with a second self-released effort, On the Brooklyn Road, in 2011. ~ Steve Leggett