I often go to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival knowing very few of the acts, which I once found daunting and now find delightful. Poring over the program book or the very decent EFMF app on my phone and reading the various bios and reviews is a great opportunity to come across both great artists and some sublime copywriting.
Consider this entry for Nick Shoulders: Wielding an ethereal croon and masterful whistle crafted from a lifetime chasing lizards through the Ozark hills, Nick Shoulders is a living link to the roots of country music with a penchant for the absurd.
This was intriguing enough to get him shortlisted, but he appeared on the sidestage Saturday night (as they do while changing the main stage over for the next act), with his 'rat tail' mullet and bright pink t-shirt from "Booger Hollow, Arkansas", he sold a lot of folks on seeing his full set the next day.
The great whistling and yodeling certainly caught my ear, but his banter and clever, incisive lyrics got me by the brain and wouldn't let go. Given how conservative country radio has become, hearing a white fella sing, "I wish ancestral lands belonged to indigenous people/ who didn't have to live in fear of law from the steeple/ does grievance make you strong or does is just make you feeble..." in a homage to Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In" was kind of delightful, to be honest.
"Won't Fence us In" https://youtu.be/uaj0ktuUTEw
A self-described weirdo from Arkansas, Nick invited the thousands of us in front of main stage in Gallagher Park to join him at Stage 2 the next afternoon, and a lot of us took him up on it.
And, again, the musicality for him and his three-piece band, The Okay Crawdad, is pretty great for a retro country and cowpunk lover like myself, but the wit is what engaged me the most. From his earnest belief that much more joins us than divides us and the many problems he feels plague his home country, to the history lesson and amazing mouthbow performance, it was one of the best side-stage performances I have ever seen at the festival.
He is a very smart and opinionated cat as well; his op-ed piece, "Fake Twang: How Conservatism Stole Country Music" (written for In These Times) is a neat read and includes this little nugget:
In New Orleans, I’m privileged enough to two-step and yodel in the most vibrant and least white country-music scene in the United States, and it makes me proud to love this genre, despite the darkness. There’s a ton of work left to do to make this unique music form more accessible and more welcoming to people outside of the white rural experience, but we’ve come a long way.
Like Corb Lund, Shoulders comes to country and roots music after working in punk with his band Thunderlizard, which even I have heard of. And my favourite insight over his entire set was in this introduction to his song "Turn On The Dark":
"If you ever wonder why so many punks and goths and metal heads and weirdos seem to be getting into country, don't forget that the fiddle was once referred to as the Devil's instrument. This genre has its roots in rebellion and we are never going away. This next song is for anyone who ever left a rural area to feel safe..."
So yeah, Glory and I were delighted for the entirety of the performance.
Saving Country Music has a lot of praise for Shoulders as well:
"It is not a spurious notion to consider Nick Shoulders one of the most unique and gifted vocal acrobats of roots music from this generation or any other. The splendid highlonesome yodels, the exquisite whistling, the occasional run on the throat trumpet, or just the timbre of his voice when he’s singing straight with no frills is something that immediately sets him off against the weary peloton of average performers. With range, control, and confidence, Shoulders can sing whatever he wants, however he wants, and does.[...]
"In previous eras, Nick Shoulders would be a marvel of American music with a handsome recording contract and an open invite on the Grand Ole Opry any night he was in town. They would have written bad Westerns for him to star in just to showcase his voice. Instead Nick Shoulders is self-releasing his second record with no publicist and little praise from the press."
"Whooped If You Do" https://youtu.be/KS11SK-LZYE
"Heart of Glass" (cover) https://youtu.be/07o-R_YGDSs
I am going to the Bear Creek Folk Fest this weekend in GP, I will make sure I check him out
ReplyDeleteHe is pretty weird but a talented musician and lots of fun, with a great backing band! If you like rockabilly at all you are likely to have a good time.
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