Adriana Nikole finally feels at home

On a bright weekday afternoon at Mills Record Co., a couple of people are flipping through used records in the store’s recent addition. They seem unperturbed by the impromptu photo shoot that has taken over the stage area, where Adriana Nikole has taken out her guitar and, at the photographer’s request, begun to play. She does so quietly, her music barely above the volume of the grime-caked rock pouring out of the speaker next to her. The browsers don’t look up.

Then Nikole (her stage name drops her surname, Moreyra) starts to sing, and “Veil,” the heartbreak ballad she’s playing, suddenly fills the room. Her voice is burly and bluesy yet fully in her control; when the final verse calls for a falsetto, she ends with a trill that would make Minnie Riperton proud.

Nikole seems reluctant to put her guitar away, now that she’s going. As she and I regroup elsewhere in the shop, she fidgets, tugging the edges of her sweatshirt’s sleeves down around her fingertips, and her voice is once again soft. I suggest that she seems more comfortable belting out a song for strangers than having a conversation with one.

“Oh, my God, I’m so bad at talking,” she admits. “My banter at shows is horrible. Horrible. I’m still working at it. In between tunings, like, what am I gonna say?”

Nikole has battled depression and anxiety as long as she can remember, she says. Conversations — with anyone — have never been easy.

“I was the type of person that would go to the neighborhood bar with a book,” she tells me. “I would witness everybody around me, living their lives. I would go out to places and I would see things happening, but I would be too afraid to approach anyone because I wanted to be a part of it so bad.” She pauses, thinks, goes on: “I don’t know if that makes sense. It’s about being accepted. I was afraid it would never happen.”

Things changed for Nikole seven years ago, when someone gave her a ukulele. She was 24 and still living in her native Royal Oak, Michigan. New instrument in hand, she began attending area open-mic nights.

“The ukulele kind of saved my life,” she says. “My first open mic in Michigan, I was so scared. I could only play a few chords on ukulele. I had to have friends hold up lyrics for me because I didn’t have the muscle memory yet. I sang this old Irish tune, and the whole place went quiet, and I remember thinking, like, ‘Maybe I should keep doing this.’ It made me feel like I had a purpose, and I really learned to open up. I’ve been opening up ever since.”

When she moved to Kansas City two and a half years ago — after stints in Nashville, where she picked up the guitar, and Knoxville, Tennessee — Nikole began searching for ways to meet other musicians. Her first instinct was to go to open-mic nights, and there she came across fellow singer-songwriter Anna Cole. She began performing with Cole and the Other Lovers, amassing contacts and building friendships. Far more quickly than she had expected, Nikole found herself embedded in the local music community.

In January, she formed a backing band called the Panic, with drummer Josh Enyart, guitarist Jason Nash (both of the Jorge Arana Trio) and bassist Devin McCollum, who performs as Dmac.

“I got really lucky,” Nikole says of the Panic. “Those guys know how to create a sound around me, and I think we’re having a lot of fun. And that’s the thing I’ve learned living here: I feel like I was so scared of everything that I was sheltered in my own way, and once I just started meeting everybody and networking and doing open mics, it opened this huge world to me. Having a good support system really helped me.”

Though she has been performing for six years, it wasn’t until Nikole landed in Kansas City that she felt ready to record. Thanks to Enyart, Nash and Dmac, she’s fleshing out material for her debut release. That won’t include the five songs on her ReverbNation page, which Nikole calls, with an embarrassed shrug, “barely demo songs.”

Demos, yes, but riveting music. Nikole’s voice slinks through the electro-pop track “Vibration” and booms over the delicate strumming of “Some Hell.” She can make her voice gnarly with character or church-choir smooth, and you hear that nothing is off-limits.

“My thing is just to really get the emotion across,” she says. “I want people to relate to it, to listen to the tremor in the vocals or something and feel what I feel.”

And there is something undeniably relatable about Nikole. She looks a little like a goth Snow White: pale face, dark hair, mouth splashed today with bright-purple lipstick. When you hear her talk about the importance that music has in her life, you believe her.

“I want to promote awareness for depression and anxiety and those issues,” she says. “I grew up with that, big time, and it stunted a lot of things in my life. I’m glad I am where I’m at now. I’m amazed that I am because, at one point, I thought I’d be dead.”

She goes on: “I still have dark days. When I do, I’ll force myself to pick up the guitar. It’s a friend. Things may not be where I want them to be, and music may seem so hard at times, but before I had music, things were so dark. I didn’t like myself. I think that’s the thing: I found something that I love, that actually makes me happy, and I count that blessing every day.”