Nick Shoulders on reshaping country music, life in a band and JD Vance

Rising country star Nick Shoulders is a rarity in the entertainment field in that he displays a disarming honesty in both his music and his political views.

Along with Sierra Ferrel, The Lumineers and Margo Cilker, with whom he is is appearing at shows in Australia, Shoulders is reshaping American country music by taking it back to its roots in the American south and southwest during the 1920s.

Like many teenagers of the early 21st century, Shoulders wanted nothing to do with the music he had grown up with, forming a punk band before seeing the value of what he had closer at home.

“I got majorly influenced by that music as a kid, but as a teenager I wanted nothing to do with that and went as far away from it as possible by forming a punk band,” Shoulders said.

“When I started to discover Jimmy Rogers, the Carter Family and many blues artists like Tommy Johnson and the Mississippi Sheiks, I realised that country music and the early blues were much more rebellious and much more like the music I was playing at the time.

“I currently combine this with the fact that the working class struggles of this music were pretty punk.”

After his musical and cultural epiphany, Shoulders searched closer to home to find that his musical inspirations had always been around him.

“While I was having my relevance struggle in the 21st century and living in a modern way I was able to apply the skills I had learned from my dad to traditional music and the way it was tapping into traditional sounds that were not so far away from the experience I was having,” Shoulders said.

On the eve of the 2024 US presidential elections, Shoulders is also questioning the rise of the right and how Trump’s VP pick JD Vance has appropriated southern values, something that particularly irks the Arkansas native.

“The rise of JD Vance is a new note in an old song that has been an unfortunate trend in right wing politics for the better part of 70 years,” Shoulders said.

“Having grown up here and knowing how intelligent, well-meaning and well-resourced the average rural southerner is, they deserve better than the JD Vances of this world.

“I am not willing to let these people go because no-one was born thinking that way, and if anything, they are cruelly subjected to years of conditioning and bullying. I couldn’t think less of JD Vance, but I will say that he is not new and there will be more of him.”

As someone who is constantly on the road Shoulders is acutely aware of how close he and his long-time band the Okay Crawdad are from financial disaster.

“I feel this is a discussion I have a lot with my band and people who are in the same line of work, and that is music is like no other work, there is no fixed price and there is no organisation of labour and we are not considered labour,” Shoulders said.

“I come from a background where I have worked really dark, bad jobs like painting houses in between tours knowing that if we missed one tour a year we are at poverty level.

“We are not out there in an ivory tour bus, we are working pretty hard to keep ourselves afloat as a band.”

With few outlets for Shoulders’ country-roots Americana music, he and his band have relied on the impact of their performance and creative videos like Won’t Fence Us In to gain recognition.

Shoulders will be performing with Margo Cilker on October 09 at the Factory Theatre.

“I will be playing with our bass player Grant D’Aubin who is born and raised in a blue grass family, also from Arkansas,” Shoulders said.

“We are really going to try and represent this corner of the world and its cultural, political and economic experiences.

“Expect whistles, country music, yodels and the like and a lot of fun.”

Shoulders also added “I hope to sing something with Margo and this is a good reminder to shoot her a message and suggest that we get together.”

Nick Shoulders and Margo Cilker
October 9, 2024
Factory Theatre, Marrickville
https://www.factorytheatre.com.au/event/nick-shoulders-margo-cilker/