“Traveling the world has really let me appreciate what’s unique about the United States; not in a jingoistic way, in a cultural way. We’ve got to hold on to the regional, the authentic, the roots…in everything, not just music. We shouldn’t become a bland homogenized monolith. It’s in the music, it’s in the food, it’s in the dirt; you just have to turn off the TV and find it; that’s how I like to live.”

-Nick 13

 
 
 
Introduction & Interview by Theo Constantinou
 
 
It was another typical day here at Paradigm Magazine; writing, brainstorming, easing the bombardment of work and emails with the comfort of my iPod on shuffle. Johnny Cash’s classic “I Walk the Line” started playing and, I said to my business partner, “Man the country music industry isn’t what it used to be; in fact, what the fuck happened to men like Bob Wills, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and the ‘Man in Black’. Then I thought to myself of how important Nick 13′s self titled debut album is not only to country music, but traveling towards destiny, if you will. Having first been a huge supporter of Tiger Army and, everything that group and Nick have done, I wasn’t happy to hear that the group was taking a break. However, when I found out that Nick 13 was on a temporary hiatus from Tiger Army and heading to Nashville, I knew that Nick was the guy to take traditional country off life support and revitalize it with his own Psychobilly intensity.
 
This excerpt from ‘Nashville Winter’ best describes Nick’s authenticity and why country music needs Nick 13.
 
Sometimes something calls a man to run, he’s gotta leave behind all the comforts of home
and when I heard the music call to me I said goodbye to the winter sun becouse I had to leave
Ohh everything that I want is right here but what I need I cannot get I gotta go somewhere
 
Round this world I rocked and I have rolled something much I love had a hold on my soul
there were still a place I just had to see and so I packed my bags and head up on Tennesse
Ohh everything that I want is back there but what I need I cannot get I gotta go somewhere
 
In this Nashville winter I’m a thousand miles from home, I set out in search of something that I had to find alone
 
 
 
Nick, your song ‘All Alone’ speaks of solitude and loneliness, a love lost if you will. Your song with Tiger Army, ‘True Romance’ has the same type of theme, specifically about a lost love … Are these songs specific to a previous lover or, a universal theme about love and the loss of that love coupled with inevitable loneliness?
 
Some of my songs are like short stories…when this is the case, I’m drawing on my experiences to help tell the story; like any writer. It’s a good thing to me if the line between the song’s story and my real life becomes blurred. Sometimes songs draw on a remembered feeling or emotion and that becomes more important than the specific circumstances that caused it.
 

 
I read in a snippet of your biography, “While this vanishing world echoes in your music, you put a modern twist on it that is all your own.” Do you think that the era of the 1950s has truly vanished or, it is now finding a resurgence not only in music like yours, but with peoples aesthetic towards style and the way they are now living their lives?
 
I think it’s sad the way society just forgets. When I watch footage of the Grand Ole Opry from fifty-five years ago, with all that talent on one stage, it just absolutely boggles the mind. Yet, how many of those artists are remembered today in a manor truly befitting to their work? It’s not just the fifties and it’s not just music; there was a different attitude towards many things in this country prior to the 1970s, and I feel like we’ve lost a lot in my lifetime, let alone my parents’ lifetimes. The way people worked, the way things were made…almost twelve million people follow Kim Kardashian on Twitter, someone who has absolutely nothing to say. Twelve million people care. Do twelve million people care about traditional country music? I don’t know. I try to stay positive and ignore the aspects of modern culture that sicken me, and focus on creating for myself and the relative few who get it.
 
If you could ask Lefty Frizzell any one question about life or music, what would it be?
 
I’m sure there are plenty of things I’d like to ask him, but I’d first want to let him know how much lasting impact his music has had. He died sadly, before his legacy and accomplishments were heralded the way they should have been, and I’m sure he’d be happy to know that someone loves his music as much as I do, someone who wasn’t yet born when he passed away.
 

 
What is or was your relationship with Davey Havok of AFI, and what were some of the reasons for your collaborations on some of the most powerful Tiger Army records?
 
He’s one of my oldest friends; we went to High School together in the same small town, in Northern California redwood country. We were both part of a small circle of friends, and later musicians, who did our own thing very much apart from the pre-internet vacuum of small towns and the terrible mainstream music of the time. We’ve sang backups on each other’s records for many years, Jade Puget is another such friend that I’ve collaborated with over the years.
 
I read that you are involved in Transcendental Meditation … The Maharishi said that, “being happy is of the utmost importance. Success in anything is through happiness. Under all circumstances be happy. Just think of any negativity that comes at you as a raindrop falling into the ocean of your bliss” … What do you consider to be your personal definition of happiness?
 
I think that, many of our emotions can’t be adequately described or conveyed by the words we have. That’s a songwriter’s job, in some respects: to try. I can feel it, but I don’t know that I can explain it. Happiness is in the big things, and in the little things as well. TM can be great for helping to connect the two.
 
I am not sure if you are familiar with the work of Herman Hesse, but I have been become obsessed as of lately. I just re-read Demian, and have finished Steppenwolf and Siddhartha: all classics. I was doing some research, post my readings, and found that the word Siddhartha is made up of two words in the Sanskrit language, siddha (achieved) + artha (meaning or wealth). The two words together mean, “he who has found meaning (of existence)” … Do you think you will ever find the meaning of existence and/or, are you currently on the path to finding it?
 
It’s been many years since I read Hesse, and I’ve never read either of his two best-known works that you mention, which is ironic since, some of his early novels made a big impression on me in my youth: Peter Camenzind, Beneath The Wheel, Gertrud… I’ve meant to revisit his work for some time actually. I’m an existentialist to a certain degree in that, I think greater meaning is probably a subjective thing that everyone has to find for themselves. My life’s purpose has been the creation of music; that’s why I’m here, and that’s what I’ll leave behind. It’s helped at least a few people, myself included.
 
Since Merle Haggard is one of your inspirations and you had the honor of opening for him this past year, I read a quote from Merle that said, “The only thing that I miss lately in all music is somebody that will put out a melody that you can whistle. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything happening like that.” Do you think that, specifically in today’s country genre, that nobody is putting out any music that you can ‘whistle,’ and why do you think that might be the case?
 
I have to admit that, I’m not really that familiar with the country of today. A few years ago, when I started writing the solo album, I stopped listening to anything that wasn’t country music…I stayed mostly between the late 1920s and the late 60s. It started as a writing exercise, an immersion technique. But I found out that it’s like a bottomless well, there’s forty years of music there to explore, and I haven’t really stopped digging into that period since; it’s still the majority of what I listen to. I’ll get to the seventies eventually. There are so many things that aren’t being done like they used to: quicker, cheaper, more efficient, but also of lower quality; that’s our whole society. A truly worthwhile song today will still be worthwhile in five years, in fifteen years, in fifty years. That’s what I think about, not what’s happening around me right now: yesterday and tomorrow.
 

 
I have been throwing the word ‘Americana’ around a lot lately, on topics ranging from everything to style, music, food, history … How would you best describe ‘Americana’ for Nick 13′s music and lifestyle?
 
It wasn’t a term that I was familiar with before a few years ago, at least not as applied to music. But just like the musical nomenclature shifted from “hillbilly” to “country,” so “country” music has shifted into a different form, and there’s got to be another term to describe what’s coming from the roots. I like the word “Americana” for that purpose and I like that it overlaps with the non-musical. Traveling the world has really let me appreciate what’s unique about the United States; not in a jingoistic way, in a cultural way. We’ve got to hold on to the regional, the authentic, the roots…in everything, not just music. We shouldn’t become a bland homogenized monolith. It’s in the music, it’s in the food, it’s in the dirt; you just have to turn off the TV and find it; that’s how I like to live.
 
I recently did an interview with a friend of Paradigm Magazine’s … Nick Waterhouse … he said, “I would say, based on the shift in values in society and in education, that there’s a very romantic notion of being a creator. Of course, the machinations that made those careers as large or lucrative or ‘respectable’ as they were through the last few decades – the music, film, and to a lesser extent, the art world, are all losing their shit, aren’t they?” … Do you think that people today are truly losing their shit and, to another point, that music/people/creation isn’t as sincere as it was let’s say 50 years ago?
 
I think there’s a bigger divide than ever, with both. In decades past, it seemed more frequent that something could be good AND sincere, AND successful. You see all three in the same place with Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, The Beatles, and so many others from the 40s-60s. But it’s increasingly difficult to find even two out of three with one artist nowadays. What the public wants, and how it consumes, has obviously changed, but not in ways that I understand. I don’t respond to most of the things they do, nor do I want to. I value things that few others seem to care about. I know I’m not unique in that, but we’re definitely in the minority. It wasn’t always that way, that’s probably why my musical tastes are more in line with people who are my senior…sometimes by several decades. But I also believe that everything finds its own level. If making real music becomes a niche, so be it – that’s where you’ll find me.