biographical info
Herald Nix has long been one of the most respected artists in the Canadian underground scene. Ten years before people started talking about ‘alt country’, Herald Nix was writing and playing music that drew on very deep roots.
The Songs – There’s a kind of majesty in Nix’s telling of stories: with stoical detachment and a weatherbeaten, I’ve-seen-it-all voice, he can make a three-minute song of disillusionment sound as epic as King Lear,…yet there’s a wonderful simplicity to all of these songs. Honed over a period of years and hundreds of live performances, and they carry no excess baggage. Yet their simplicity doesn’t limit them: they’re pure, but they’re also deep, and in their depths can be found a wealth of interpretive possibilities.
The Music – Nix's guitar playing is so personal as to be uncategorizable. Using fingers and slide together, he evokes bottleneck blues and pedal-steel styles; his use of echo harks back to Carl Perkins and Scotty Moore; his gritty amp tone might have been devised by the Memphis
and Mississippi transplants who invented Chicago blues. He knows his Link Wray and his Fred McDowell, yet there’s an unpredictability to his playing that keeps it from ever sounding archival. Like his songs, his music is simultaneously ancient and immediate.
Recorded by sound wunderkind Jon Wood (Flophouse Jr.) The album was recorded live to tape, with no overdubs, in a large old house in East Vancouver. The sound is warm, alive and beautiful.
lineup
Herald Nix Singer/ Songwriter/ Guitarist
Ronnie Hayward Bass
Jay Johnson Drums
influences
Bob Dylan
Hank Williams
Howlin Wolf
Velvet Underground