Carmen Nickerson’s true Americana heartland story begins on her family’s small farm in north central Iowa near Saint Ansgar, where she helped work the land with her parents and five older siblings. There was music all around: in church, barber-shop quartets, at school, and within her family’s evenings of gathered song and rich harmonies The images and stories of her songs flow naturally from the truth of this life, with all its attendant pressures and expectations.