Vada Powell

Vada Powell almost talked herself out of the thing she was born to do. Music has been wired into her DNA since she was two years old, performing for her family with the kind of fearless confidence only toddlers have. Her dad played in a punk rock band, and growing up surrounded by that energy shaped everything about how she hears the world. By ten, she had a ukulele. By twelve, she had a brain tumor. The diagnosis sent her to Memphis, to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where she spent months navigating treatment in a city soaked in blues history. Somewhere between the medical procedures and the music pouring out of every corner of Memphis, something shifted. Vada started writing songs. Not as a hobby or a distraction, but as survival. A way to take everything she was feeling and turn it into something she could hold onto. She wrote her first original song on that ukulele and performed it at her seventh grade talent show, and in that moment she understood: this wasn't just something she loved. This was who she was. Music became the way Vada processed everything. The big moments and the tiny ones, the heartbreak and the mundane, all of it filtered through lyrics and melodies until it made sense. Writing gave her purpose, a way to take her life and make it mean something beyond just surviving it. She loved making people laugh, moving them, creating something honest out of the mess of being human. But by senior year of high school, the practical voices got louder. She convinced herself to play it safe, to major in education at a school close to home, to choose stability over the dream that had been burning in her chest since she was a kid. And then she went to a church event where Josiah Queen was performing. Watching him on stage, she saw something she recognized. Pure joy. The kind of freedom that comes from doing exactly what you're meant to do. And then he said it: "Sometimes God wants you to step out of your comfort zone in order to do what He has called you to do." In that moment, Vada knew. She was supposed to move to Nashville. She was supposed to chase this. Now she's building a career out of the thing she almost convinced herself to let go. She writes songs that bring people together, that give others the same outlet music has always given her. She's especially focused on reaching young women, using intentional lyrics to help them feel seen, heard, and understood in a world that often makes them feel invisible. More than anything, Vada wants to create an honest community where people can show up as themselves, relate to each other's stories, and know they belong. Vada Powell is a survivor, a songwriter, and someone who refused to let fear win. And she's just getting started building the life she almost walked away from.