As the art of blues guitar keeps evolving, one artist is stepping out to lead the way. Jared James Nichols is just as comfortable playing with blues legends as he is with modern hard rock bands. He recently released his self-titled record which combines all of these styles into a sound that is unmistakably his. Jared joined me to talk about his new record and much more.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Blues Fix with Jared James Nichols –
On his band for the record – The band on the record, it was a crazy band, it was two other guys. It was Dennis Holm, who’s been my long-time drummer since, basically, I started my trio, and then an old friend of ours that we reconnected with when I moved to Nashville, his name’s Clark Singleton on the bass guitar…(The drum sound is) super aggressive, and it’s funny, man, when we were making the record, that was one of the things. We wanted every instrument, it’s such a simple setup, guitar-bass-drums, but we needed it to fill a certain sound and have a certain attitude. So we were really excited with the way the drums came out. :39
On if all of the songs were written for the 2021 ep or if some came later – The second part of what you said. I find myself always writing. So while we were doing that Shadow Dancer EP, ideas were coming in and there were things on there that I was like, “Alright, this is great”, and then that almost feel the fire to do the whole record because we really felt like we achieved the sound on that Shadow Dancer EP, and I was like, “Okay, how do take this, how do we chase this and keep going and bringing it up a notch?” That’s when we started to write songs like “My Delusion”, “Hallelujah”, and these were songs that were coming out after that. Truth be told, even the single, “Down The Drain”, that song was the last song we cut and we weren’t even gonna do it, it just came like way later in the process, and we were like, “Alright, let’s go back in and do that”. So right up until the very end, basically until mixing, we were just cutting songs and creating. 1:41
On his songwriting process – Before this record, I would always take the song where I thought I needed to go. With this record, I tried to grow as a songwriter, I try to grow as a vocalist, and say, “Okay, I’m gonna do my best to just be present, be in the moment”. What I find a lot with songs is if I push too hard in the beginning, let’s say I write, I write a riff and a melody up with a vocal, and I go, “Okay, it’s gonna sound just like this”, that’s when I start to really kind of screw it up. Because for me, when I take it to the band and I say, “Okay, here’s the idea”, and then it’s almost a collaborative effort because it’s like, “Okay, what do the drums feel, how does this feel as a unit?” I always have this mindset of, Can I pull it off live?” Not that every song will always be played live, but I always want my music to have a breath to it, that human element. So with this record, I made that conscious decision to say, “Okay, I’m gonna get out of my own way. I’m not gonna try and force these songs into any box”, You were talking about, the flange or any of these kind of things, it was almost as if that was the final coats of paint. I brought in a rock basically, and I was like, “Okay, here’s the rock, what do you guys think we should do to trim it down?”, and then we just went like that, so it was a really organic experience. I just tried to be present and put my best foot forward for whatever was good for the song3:09
On the evolution of his writing – Before this and having to make music, my first recordings were the first time I was ever in a studio. I never thought about the flow of a record, I never thought about even songwriting. Songwriting, to me, used to be a means to an end where it was, “Okay, the song is basically a vehicle for my guitar playing, it’s a vehicle for an attitude and let’s go”. But as I’ve grown and I’m so happy about this, I’ve been able to almost step back, get out of that shell and say, “Okay, I am at heart a song guy”, most of us are, “Oh, I love this song”. We’re not like, “Oh, I love this solo”, of course, there is that too. We don’t have a compilation of solos, well, maybe we do. But that to me was really important. So I said, I want to dig in and moving forward, I just wanna dig in as a songwriter and see where I can push it that way, because I think that there’s so much left to say, especially with an electric guitar in the rock, in the blues genre. It’s just you have to be willing to move with it, you have to be willing to say, “Okay, let’s see what we can bring out of this, let’s really think about it, and Let’s really try and shape something”. 5:07
On the origin of his finger-picking style – Well, what’s funny about me is I’m a lefty, so I write., I’m left-hand dominant. So when I picked up a guitar, I wanted to be lefty, it was an old acoustic at my parent’s house. I remember when I got my first electric, I was sitting in the store holding the right-handed guitars, like a lefty, and my first guitar came with a free lesson. The first thing the guy said was, “Hey man, you gotta flip the guitar”, so I flipped it and I tried to use a pick, but what I noticed was since I’m left-hand dominant, I never really could get good, good with the pick. So I did it for a while, but then I was like, “Man, I like to feel the strings under my fingers, just like on this hand”, and the guys that I saw that were using their fingers, obviously, I knew about classical guitar players using their fingers, but to me, I was like, “That’s not speaking to me”. So it was, obviously, Jeff Beck, I was seeing Derek Trucks and the way that he plays the guitar, a little bit of Mark Knopfler, a little bit of that style. Then the other big one is Albert King, blues guitar player, and the way that he played and the way he picked with his thumb. I was like, “Well, these guys can do it. I wanna do that”. I never had a dream of being a professional guitar player or anything like that, so I was just doing it to have fun. People would say, “Hey man, you gotta use a pick, if you don’t use a pick, you’re not gonna be a professional”. I was like, “I don’t care, I’m having fun”, and it just kept growing and no one really showed me how to do it, it was just a feel thing, and it kinda developed from what felt right for me. 6:45
On developing his own sound – It was one of those things when you know people started to go, “Hey, you’re that no-pick guy”, and I never thought of it like that. I was just more along the lines of like, “Okay, this is what feels right”. I never wanted it to be that clicky-click. Thank you for saying that. The one thing I always think about is, alongside the fingerstyle, you can hear a lot about a guitar player in their bending, their vibrato, and their touch, so I really wanted to work on that. George Thorogood told me once, he’s like, “Man, I don’t care if someone says they hate the way I play, but when they hear me on the radio, they’re gonna know it’s me”. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. Because it’s kind of true, it’s like everyone has different styles and opinions, but having your own sound or having crafted your own voice within the electric guitar, I think at the end of the day, that’s the coolest thing to do. 9:05
On creating a style that appeals both to blues fans and classic rock fans – What’s funny about that too, is our single on this record “Down the Drain”, at radio, I’m getting different spins, everything from of course, my friend I’m name dropping, (Joe) Bonamassa, his show and all these cool things. But then we’re noticing not only is it blues, but they’re playing on classic rock. You know, as well as I do, for classic rock to play this, classic rock is classic rock. So I think for the love of the music, I’ve always loved, in the beginning, I only wanted to play traditional blues, but I always love rock, I always loved classic rock, so it was really important for me to try and straddle both lines and to really kind of dip my toe into each water because I find a lot of similarities in the music, and I think especially now it’s 2023 and it’s okay to mix genre. 10:45
On if he structures his set differently based on the artist he’s playing with – I really do, and I try and be out of the way again, I want to be an entertainer and I want the people to love being in the moment and hearing that live music. So as you said, I have played gigs with everyone from Honey Boy Edwards, who was the oldest blues man who played with Robert Johnson to metal festivals in the Czech Republic. I’ve run the gambit, and I’ve played the craziest of gigs like that, so I try and cater the set to really kind of the color of the artist, I’m playing with me. It’s like if we’re gonna be playing with an old classic rock band, like Blue Oyster Cult, I’m gonna cater it to that color of rock & roll where it’s like a little bit more like we’re totally in that classic rock vein, but I’m kind of pushing on the edge of a little bit, maybe a little bit heavier. But then when I go out and we tour with Walter Trout and I was like, “This is going to be my early ZZ Top moment”. Then it was Zakk Wylde and Black Label Society, it’s like, “Let’s play heavy. That’s what they wanna hear”. I think what’s cool about that is, at the end of the day, when someone finds me and maybe they’ll go,” Oh, that guy was pretty cool, let’s check out his music”, and they’ll hear the other shades of it and I go, “You know what? He’s pretty cool”. 12:12
On being able to play everything at their own shows – It’s funny though, my bandmates hate me because we’ll have our own shows and I just get into it and I just start jamming and it’s like almost like rapid fire. We do have a set list, don’t get me wrong, but all of a sudden we’ll be playing something and then I’ll be, “You know what, I feel this in the room right now, I feel this”, and I’ll get into something else. I really try with a live element to just be in the moment and just go for it. When we go to Europe, and this started happening, one of the first times you went there, we’ll be in Spain and they stay open and they party all night. So let’s say our set was only supposed to be an hour and 20 minutes or an hour and fifteen, we played for three hours. And they loved it, and we loved it. But my bandmates would start going, “Dude, come on”. 13:47
On playing back-to-back festivals in May featuring Pantera & Rob Zombie, then Lucinda Williams & Allison Russell – It’s funny. I know I think about that a lot too, and I have a lot of friends that obviously play in other bands and stuff, and they’re always like, “Jared, you play the most random bills”. Also, we’re doing a festival with some reggae, Ziggy Marley. How is that gonna happen? But that’s what’s kind of cool I feel, about this part of music that I’m doing is it kind of fits in a lot of different applications, and it’s fun for me because it keeps everything fresh too, it keeps everything kind of like, “Alright, what are we doing? Where are we going?” There are even times we will be playing somewhere, we’re doing this biker festival, we’ll do one show at a club and then we do one show where we’re gonna open up, do the Rob Zombie thing and all that, but have a club show, I’d say, “Alright guys, we’re doing half originals have covers and we’re gonna blow these people away”, and we’ll play all that old stuff that they love, just for fun. They get the flare of familiarity where they’re like, “Oh, I love this song”, and then I can play one of mine, and they’re like, “Oh, this is cool”. 15:09
On if he will stay solo or someday start a band – I see both. I always want to continue, no matter where life takes me, as long as I’m still playing, I would love to continue the trio always. To just kind of live in that cell, but I wanna grow. Not only do I wanna start a Black Country Communion part two, but I would love to jam with some of my favorite bands if the opportunity ever arose, but also like I’d like to continue developing as a songwriter and in the studio. So for me, it’s like I’m like a sponge. It’s like I’ll always be Jared James Nichols, the guitar, that guy. But I would love to explore every other opportunity that comes my way and just kind of be open and open to working with different artists too because I think that that would be a really cool thing to kinda take what I do and potentially collaborate with someone else that’s not what I do. 17:00
