Conrad “Connie” Reeder was born in Columbus, Ohio (1954). After High School she attended Austin Peay State University as a music double major in voice and piano. Reeder started working professionally in the music industry as a studio staff singer at Tree Publishing in Nashville, while performing as a singer/dancer at Opryland, USA, in I Hear America Singing.

She then moved to New York to sing in clubs and studied acting at HB Studio (Uta Hagen, Stephen Strimpell), while performing in Off-Broadway shows with John Cullum, David Keith, John Goodman and more. John Denver saw her sing at a club in New York and shortly after Denver hired her to tour with him around the world, performing solo and back-up on-stage and on television. Denver also recorded a song they wrote, “Thanks to You.”

Using her own original songs, Reeder was signed by Steve Barri to the MoRocco Label on Motown, which dissolved before her album was released. As a result of this encouragement, she formed bands to perform her music at venues in Nashville and Los Angeles (Madame Wong’s, China Club) under various names such as: Big Blonde and Fugitive Blonde. Her song, I’m Blonde, He’s Black, charted on Alternative Radio stations in the early 90s. In addition to Denver projects, she continued to sing in the studio on projects with Walter Becker, Elliot Scheiner, Rodney Crowell, Cliff Williamson and more. 

Around this time (1996) Reeder discovered a muse for writing articles for periodicals (EQ Magazine, Sierra Club) which allowed her to be at home more for her daughters and to help her husband, Roger Nichols, (8-time Grammy Winning Engineer/Producer) with his in-house studio.

A year after Roger died in 2011, she wrote and recently published a book, Memory Clouds: Good Grief Bad Grief. Connie writes: As I sailed through my memory clouds, the good and the bad, an anchor appeared. That anchor was envisioning a new chapter of my life. To pay it forward, she has mentored grief workshops using writing genres such poetry, essay, dialogue or narrative to help people work through emotional pain. 

In 2008, she earned a MFA in Film, Theater & Communication Arts at the University of New Orleans. Lately, her plays have been staged in Los Angeles and West Palm Beach. The Captive is currently in development with the University of Penn State. When not teaching as an English Lecturer, she works as an independent script consultant and editor, and is currently writing a new TV series with the working title, Elementals. She continues to sing in the studio and is currently writing compositions for a new Harmonic Ocean project. Reeder has two daughters, Cimcie and Ashlee and two granddaughters. 

Reeder is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Actors Equity, NARAS, AFTRA, BMI and Sigma Alpha Iota. She is currently working on a doctorate in Mythological Studies with Depth Psychology at the Pacific Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA.