Leaving Panic! At the Disco, Joining Incubus, and How This First-Call Bassist Gets the Gigs -- Plus Life as a Woman Touring at the Highest Level
Nicole Row has one of the most interesting resumes in contemporary touring -- she was the bassist for Panic! At the Disco, then joined Incubus, and has built a reputation as a first-call player that keeps her working at the top of the touring circuit. She is also one of the few women in a role that the industry has historically reserved for men, and she has navigated that reality with a clarity and groundedness that makes the conversation about her career inseparable from the conversation about what it takes to build one in a business that doesn't always make it easy.
In this conversation with Elmo, Nicole talks about what the transitions between Panic! At the Disco and Incubus actually looked like, what it means to be a first-call bassist and how she became one, and what relocating from Los Angeles changed about her creative life and her sense of herself as a musician. She is direct, self-aware, and genuinely funny -- the kind of guest who makes a one-hour conversation feel like thirty minutes.
"Being a first-call player isn't about being the best player. It's about being the player people trust. Those are different things."
The real story behind the transition: what the Panic! years were, what the decision to leave looked like, and what it felt like to step away from one of the most successful touring acts in rock music. Nicole's honest account of a career move that could have gone either way and what she has learned from the experience of having made it.
How the Incubus gig came about and what it has been like: the audition process, the first tour, what the band is like to work with, and what joining a band with that kind of history and that loyal a fanbase has taught her about the relationship between legacy, expectation, and the specific role of the bassist in a rock band's sound.
What first-call actually means and how she built that reputation: the specific things she does before, during, and after every gig that keep her getting called back, the reputation she has built among bandleaders and musical directors, and her honest take on what separates the players who get called from the players who wonder why they aren't.
Nicole's candid perspective on what it is like to be a woman in a role that is still dominated by men: the specific challenges, the moments that have stood out, what has changed in the years she has been doing this, and what she believes still needs to change for the next generation of women who want to build the kind of career she has built.
What leaving Los Angeles changed -- the creative environment, the pace, the relationships, and what she found when she stepped away from the center of the music industry and gave herself space to develop as both a musician and a person. Her take on how geography shapes creativity in ways that are easy to underestimate.
What Nicole would tell a young bassist trying to build a career: the specific things she believes matter most, what she has learned about the relationship between musicianship and professionalism, and the particular thing she has come to understand about what it takes to be a first-call player that she wishes someone had told her earlier.
Nicole on the Panic! At the Disco transition: her most candid account of what that chapter of her career was, what it was like to be part of one of the biggest bands in rock, and what the decision to leave actually felt like from the inside -- the doubt, the clarity, and the specific thing that made it the right call.
The Incubus audition story: how it happened, what the process was like, and what she was thinking in the room. Nicole's account of one of the biggest career moments of her life told with the specificity and honesty that makes it useful to anyone who has ever walked into an audition for something they genuinely wanted.
Her theory of first-call: Nicole's most direct articulation of what she believes it actually takes to be the player who gets called -- not the technique, not the resume, but the specific combination of musicianship, reliability, personality, and presence that makes someone the name that comes to mind when a musical director needs a bassist they can trust.
On being a woman in touring: Nicole goes there -- the specific experiences, the moments that made her feel the disparity, and the ones that made her feel seen. One of the most honest and useful conversations about gender in the music industry you will hear because it is specific rather than general.
What relocating taught her about herself: Nicole's account of what stepping away from Los Angeles revealed -- what she had been mistaking for ambition, what she had been neglecting, and what she found in herself when she was no longer in the environment that had shaped her assumptions about what her life was supposed to look like.
Nicole Row in full: sharp, funny, self-aware, and genuinely generous with everything she has learned. One of the most enjoyable conversations on the show -- the kind where you learn something useful every ten minutes without it ever feeling like a lesson.