Nikki Hornsby is an American musician. She has been active in the pop, Americana, country, and blues genres as a songwriter, singer, and guitarist. She is a Broadcast Music, Inc. associated songwriter and has written over 1000 songs. Early years Nikki Hornsby was born in Long Beach, California and grew up in Burke, Fairfax County of northern Virginia. She is the granddaughter of Columbia Records artist, musician, singer-songwriter Dan Hornsby, and her family association with songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen influenced her at a young age. She earned her first guitar at age ten by selling flower seeds door-to-door in the countryside. Her formal music lessons were in piano, accordion, and three years as a coronet trumpet player in Edgar Allen Poe, Annandale Virginia junior high school band. As a young teenager, Hornsby was contacted to perform as a solo singer and guitar artist representing her boarding school Fairfax Hall, Waynesboro VA at social events, hospitals, and TV broadcasts. She was paid to perform by Gulf Corporation at Lake Anne Reston square in Reston, Virginia for a solo outdoor concert. After graduating Fairfax Hall School, Hornsby attended Sacred Heart College and Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina full-time for three years while performing at the Sheraton Hotels and Resorts Lounge in Charlotte and other North Carolina clubs. She majored in Psychology and Theology. She transferred to George Mason University in northern Virginia and continued accepting contracts for solo work as a singer and Musicians Union Local Washington DC Chapter guitarist. She worked as a stand-up singer in a combo or duo with other professional union musicians. 1970s In the early 1970s, Hornsby was the first female singer-guitar player performing on the Auto Train that traveled from Lorton, Virginia to Sanford, Florida. She was contracted as a stand-up singer with a union piano player that she met on the auto train. She also worked with some other local union musicians in clubs in Washington DC. Chris Marchant, a union piano player she met on the Auto-Train, asked her to work as a stand up singer in the surrounding area, including Lucky Pierre's Lounge at L'Enfant Plaza and in the main cocktail lounge of the Watergate complex. In the mid-1970s, Hornsby moved back to California and worked full-time as a club performer. She played at many clubs in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, like Portofino Inn, Blue Moon Saloon, Holiday Inn,