Nick Nace’s path from Canada to New York City to Nashville has been one filled with music, but the acclaimed folk singer-songwriter admits his muse led him in a different direction throughout his younger days than it does presently. Even though he was raised on a steady diet of Queen, The Band, the Beatles and even Beck, it was the bite of the acting bug that led him to relocate from the Great White North to the Great White Way.
“I always loved music, but I was a drama kid,” he admits. Fresh out of high school in the late ‘90s Nace moved to New York City to pursue acting, and it was then his musical urges began taking a greater hold of his spirit than ever before. He bought a cheap, blue guitar and found himself playing in student housing halls more frequently as the months passed. He was attending acting school, but that cheap guitar was guiding him towards the tunes.
“I loved acting school,” he remembers. “But I could feel this pull to the guitar and songs that I had never felt for drama. Then I heard Bob Dylan’s first record and my mind was blown. The rawness and energy floored me. I was hooked. then my friend played me some Velvet Underground and I couldn’t stop listening. It had soul, it had honesty. After that, I pretty much stopped acting.”
“Why would I be a conduit for someone else’s words when I could write my own,” Nace asked himself during that college-aged musical enlightening.
Soon after forming his first folk duo, A Brief View of the Hudson, with a friend from acting school, Nace found himself with prime weekly gigs, and eventually recording an EP and an LP with the duo. And for a while, that was enough. But the urge to grow as a songwriter and to tell new stories in new ways led him to discover that the Big Apple wasn’t where he needed to be in order to move ahead.
Nace has come a very long way since moving into an East Nashville basement apartment, sight unseen, in December of 2015. He discovered a community of talented, like minded writers and musicians and began working with them. He’s toured Ireland, Canada and throughout the United States, including prized slots at the Mississippi Songwriters Festival, Dripping Springs Songwriter Festival and even won the Gulf Coast Songwriter Shootout.
Wrestling With The Mystery, Nace’s latest full-length effort, is as open-hearted and sincere as it is addictively catchy and melodic, recalling the fine country-folk efforts of Hayes Carll, Justin Townes Earle, Slaid Cleaves and James McMurtry. Recorded with producer John Latham, who also provided guitar and vocals to the record, at Nashville’s Cafe Rooster, the album features stories that are intimately, even painfully, personal, touching and tragic, and is set for release on October 25.
"Nick Nace's songs pair well with a good, long drive. Each one moves just at the right speed, poetically painting scenes of all those characters you meet out on the road -- and all those thoughts you think alone behind the wheel. He's not just a songwriter's songwriter, he's a troubadour's troubadour." - Jaimee Harris (Songwriter)
01 - One More Song
02 - Back On The Radio
03 - Fly In A Bottle
04 - Wine & Dine
05 - Her Favourite Dirty Joke
06 - Old Records
07 - Moonbaby
08 - Wake Up Next To You
09 - White Trash Southern Belle
10 - Arkansas Traveler
11 - Clarksdale Katie
12 - Grandpa's Old Guitar
“I love Nick’s writing style, reminds me of John Prine but with it’s own character also, check him out!” - Mick Flannery (Songwriter)
One great album this one folks which you can pre-order HERE.
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