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In the winter of 2003 East Village songwriter, Lach, discovered Nellie after she arrived at the infamous Antihootenanny night at Sidewalk Cafe in New York's East Village. Nellie had written her first song and had come to the open stage to pursue stand-up comedy but played the song seeing that most of the performers there were songwriters. Upon her return the following week Lach booked Nellie, suggesting she write more songs and fill-in with covers. Shortly after her first show Lach signed Nellie to a management deal with Fortified Entertainment and began his pursuit of the major labels. Asking the celebrated Trachtenberg family to invite their connection at Timeout to Nellie's show resulted in a rave in the magazine. Next stop was securing Joe Brauner of MPA and now at CAA as Nellie's booking agent. With Brauner in tow the serious work of creating buzz and courting the labels began. We can't give away all of the secrets here but within half a year Fortified negotiated a golden deal for Nellie with Columbia records. The rest is herstory :-)