Jeff Dean
Bearded man next to mural on a wall.
Nicholas Johnson is headed to The Bur Oak in a whirlwind tour.
Southern roots rocker Nicholas Johnson is on the phone from his adopted hometown of Cincinnati and he sounds rested and raring to go. Good thing, too. This week he starts a 22-nights-in-a-row tour that comes through Madison and lands at The Bur Oak on March 8. In conversation, Johnson talks just like Steve Earle, if Steve Earle weren’t trying to solve the world’s problems. There’s a frankness and a humble self-consciousness in his speech. Johnson, like Earle, is also somewhat of an outlaw.
Take the time he got kicked out of Italy. On his birthday. It was 2016. He had sold almost everything he owned, put the rest in storage, and followed a love interest to Milan. Thing is, there were mistakes on his visa and the voice at the other end of the phone said he had to leave the country. Immediately. This turned out to be a good thing. At least for his music.
Upon his return to the States he divided his time couch-squatting between Louisville and Dayton. He began to play out with a batch of finished and half-finished songs that were getting good reactions, at least from his friends. Those friends pointed him in the direction of Patrick Himes and his Reel Love Recording Company in Dayton. Among other work, Himes was the engineer on Ryan Adams’ classic debut solo album, Heartbreaker, in 2000.
“I went to the studio and we vibed so hard,” Johnson says of his time with Himes. “We had four days to do five songs,” says Johnson. The five songs became the album Shady Pines: Vol. 1, released in 2017. It’s Midwest rock wrapped in outlaw country. The music runs from the easy groove of “Shame” to the dissonant, crunchy guitar rush of “Rollercoaster.”
Shady Pines Vol. 2 will be released on March 4 and is a continuation of the partnership Johnson and Himes struck with the first project. Instead of four days, the production of Vol. 2 spread out over three years, interrupted by the pandemic.
“New Vampire” on Vol. 2 is a haunted house brought to life. Goth country. But Johnson has always tried to blend genres in his songs. It’s part of where he comes from artistically and geographically. “My musical heroes all walked that line between singer-songwriter and balls-to-the-wall rock," says Johnson. “They just did what they wanted to do.”
Johnson calls what he does “fuzz and twang” and claims the twang comes from his home state of Kentucky. Now he lives in Ohio, and “some basement rock creeps in from here.” On the rock side he tries to follow the grungy path of Ohio bands like The Breeders and The National.
Backing Johnson at The Bur Oak will be the band that’s touring with him during his March dates and which will also play a set at The Bur Oak: North Carolina’s The Pinkerton Raid. It’s a jackpot of indie and folk rock all night. Madison’s Old Soul Society and Lost Lakes are also on the program.
