>>PREVIEW
HERALD NIX
Saturday, April 8
Hifi Club
The scrape of a pick across steel, the shuffle of brushes on snare skin, an unadorned voice – long before Ryan Adams’s snarl and Wilco's sonic indulgences, roots music had a very definite connotation. It was music for back porches and streetcorners, humble and powerful all at once. And even as the actual instruments have grown more complex, as modern recording studios hold technology that would have made NASA drop their jaw a few decades back, the original recordings haven’t lost their power to grip music fans.
Salmon Arm, B.C.’s Herald Nix has been drawn to roots music as long as he can remember. And though he sloughs off the thought that the music itself holds any special power, noting that "some people find April Wine gripping," there’s no doubt of its sway over him. Nix has been hailed as "scandalously underappreciated" for his output, which follows the tenets of simple instrumentation, live recording and a search for authenticity. But despite the obvious appeal of labelling such music traditional, Nix is hesitant to wear that tag.
"I guess there it is," he ponders. "Are we playing in a traditional style or not? When you write songs, you’re looking for things you haven’t really heard before, and basing them on things you have heard before. I guess things you have heard before are kind of a springboard to things you’ve never heard before, but you’re looking to create things. I don’t know where tradition ends and the other begins."
That search for something new has led Nix to establish his own sound. Over the course of almost three decades, including a seven-year hiatus at the turn of the millennium, Nix has created his own unique take on the music. And unlike a lot of musicians who seem to peter out creatively as the years go by, Nix has garnered more accolades with each release. The latest, 2005’s Soul of a Kiss, has been almost universally acclaimed for its unique Lake Country blues. Yet Nix shows no signs of seeking greater fame, seemingly content to take his audiences as they come.
"I guess one thing is that, maybe roots, the music I like the best, is music that wasn’t inspired by a thirst for stardom and money," he offers as explanation. "Maybe there used to be more of a climate where certainly Star Search, and things like Canadian and American Idol, those things certainly never existed. And people used to play music for the pleasure and interest and the social occasion of it. It wasn’t so primarily for the money and status."
That relaxed attitude towards self-promotion may limit Nix’s audience, but it helps to keep his music pure. Like the musicians he admires, he plays out of a desire to make music, plain and simple.
"Someone like Blind Willy Johnson, he was a gospel slide guitar player that recorded in the late 20s," Nix recounts. "He was just so good that you hear him now, it doesn’t even sound old. It just sounds amazing. He used to sing on streetcorners and probably had no hope of riches or fame. Some of the things I admire the most were made by people that were never successful in that fashion."
Nix himself has yet to gain any real financial success from his music. But like his musical forebears, so long as audiences continue to show up, he’ll continue to play. Whether it’s in front of a hundred people in a bar, or just strumming on the back porch, some music is meant to stick around. |
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