Arkansas songwriter Nick Shoulders Americana roots music, ultimately encapsulates everything that makes Shoulders’ inimitable form of country music so vital: a heady balance of dazzling musicianship and punk defiance, coupled with gritty eccentricity and a generational connection to the roots of the genre. With a singing style inherited from his family’s vocal lineage, Nick’s songs achieve the rare feat of imparting difficult truths while inciting a certain joyful abandon, balancing a sound forged by years of hard travel with a heartfelt reverence for the origins of country music .
At age 13, Shoulders got a Walmart drum set and spray-painted it pink, then spent much of his adolescence playing drums in metal and punk bands. But after discovering the original blues, folk and country recordings of the 1920’s and 30’s, he found his perception radically altered. “In those records I was hearing about a world with endless wars, bank failures, crops drying out in the fields—and that was the same world I lived in,” he recalls. “I felt something click, and it led me toward reclaiming these rural singing traditions from a space of commercial propaganda that’s intent on selling a lifestyle we don’t actually live.”
With his live experience including touring with the likes of Sierra Ferrell and performing at major festivals like Stagecoach, Shoulders makes a point of bringing an educational component to his exultant and deeply communal show. “As much as we’re throwing a party, it’s also a priority to be the teacher I never had, and share this vital information that’s done wonders to improve my understanding of history, and the present we’re left with,” he says. Both live and on record, Shoulders’ music achieves the rare feat of imparting difficult truths while inciting a certain joyful abandon.
Nick says “Expect whistles, country music, yodels and the like and a lot of fun.”
“Nick Shoulders is a modern musical marvel. he’s created an appetite for otherwise arcane modes of country music. There is no competition, comparable, or peer to Nick Shoulders. He’s a subgenre all unto himself.” Saving Country Music