FOUNDER VIP RESERVATIONSFAMILY VIP RESERVATIONSFRIEND VIP RESERVATIONSLevittโs Summer Concert SeriesBuffalo NicholsThursday, June 13th, 2024All Ages | Rain or Shine Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PMTickets on-sale Friday, Feb. 23rd at 10am MTBuffalo NicholsOn his second album, The Fatalist, Carl โBuffaloโ Nichols does things with the blues that might catch you off guard. Thereโs 808 programming, chopped up Charley Patton samples, washes of synth. Thereโs a consideration of the fullness of the sonic stage and the atmospherics of the music that can only come with a long engagement with electronic music...
read more
FOUNDER VIP RESERVATIONSFAMILY VIP RESERVATIONSFRIEND VIP RESERVATIONSLevittโs Summer Concert SeriesBuffalo NicholsThursday, June 13th, 2024All Ages | Rain or Shine Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PMTickets on-sale Friday, Feb. 23rd at 10am MTBuffalo NicholsOn his second album, The Fatalist, Carl โBuffaloโ Nichols does things with the blues that might catch you off guard. Thereโs 808 programming, chopped up Charley Patton samples, washes of synth. Thereโs a consideration of the fullness of the sonic stage and the atmospherics of the music that can only come with a long engagement with electronic music. But this is no gimmicky hybrid or attempt to turn the blues into 21st century music by simply dressing it with skittering hi-hats. Nicholsโ vision for the blues is of a form of music thatโs intimately tied to everyday life in 2023, something thatโs reflected not only in the choice of instrumentation, but in the complexities of the songwriting and the gray areas his lyrics explore. This is music that comes straight from the present, and as such, itโs a reminder that the same shit that drove the first blues singers to pick up a guitar is still present behind the throbs of deep bass hits today.The Fatalist sounds unlike any blues record youโre likely to hear in 2023.Of course, Nicholsโ songwriting has always been firmly rooted in the present. He proved he could succeed on the music industryโs own blues terms on his self-titled 2021 debut, whose songs, Bandcamp Daily said, โseem to flow from some great repository of emotion and insight.โ The Fatalist finds him digging deeper in search of answers to ever-more-complicated questions around responsibility and self-definition, his plainspoken lyrics both cutting and refreshing in their sincerity and refusal to accept pat solutions. Over a guitar line that blisters and pops with bright sunshine, he holds forth on the simple everyday power of love in โLove is All,โ and when he shades his optimism with a clear-eyed view of โbad behavior in the canon of good men,โ as he sings, his guitar line goes cloudy with the thought. He slowly walks around a broken relationship in โThe Difference,โ trying to find the faults. Itโs a decidedly modern breakup song, one steeped in moral ambiguity. โI just donโt know the difference between love and sympathy,โ he sings, before hoping his once-beloved โwonโt forget the one who kept your ego fed.โStill, Nichols rarely sounds like a blues singer. Like Leonard Cohen, he dominates these songs with his voice. His low, guttural baritone is high in the mix, and he sounds coiled, clenched tight. The slow drip of his songwriting lends The Fatalist an incredible amount of drama, which the productionโat times dark and dewy and claustrophobic, at times zippy with lightโfurther emphasizes.Nichols produced the album himself at home, having recently returned to Milwaukee following a few years in Austin. โBeing back in Milwaukee reminded me of why I started making music in the first place. It got me away from the โindustry-townโ mentality,โ he says. โThereโs definitely a certain work ethic that comes from being in a city like Milwaukee. There are no clear paths to success and not many examples of โmaking it,โ so people end up creating their own path and developing a broad skill set to sustain a career as an artist.โThat personal touch is evident in how considerately these songs have been framed. โIn a lot of ways I was improvising,โ he says, and he leaned on his years of experience as a DIY musicianโand the songs themselvesโto guide him. โDrum machines are a 50-year-old technology. If the blues hadnโt been hijacked and trapped in amber, I think they naturally wouldโve been incorporated.โ The drum programming throughout feels like a natural rhythmic vehicle for these songs. โWhen you pick up a guitar, the first thing youโre gonna play is the blues,โ he says. โAnd when you pick up an 808, youโre gonna start doing trap beats.โThe albumโs most ambitious song is Nicholsโ dusky take on Blind Willie Johnsonโs โYouโre Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond.โ As he sings of salvation and relief, Nichols creates a soundscape that teems with the joyous claustrophobia of classic gospel. Triggers of Charley Pattonโs version connect the earliest blues recordings to the present, both singersโ voices urgent in their message. โItโs important for contemporary musicians to play these old songs sometimes,โ Nichols says. โI always keep traditional songs in my set and on my records because I remember how important it was for me to hear somebody interpret a song in a way that made sense to me.โNichols further draws the past into the present in โThe Fatalist Blues,โ a song that simmers with unanswered questions and quotes the classic blues song โSamson and Delilah.โ โThat was a question that stayed on my mind,โ Nichols says. โIf youโre raised in a violent environment, are you destined to become that, or can you do something to change that?โ The song finds Nichols testing the boundaries of willโโIf I had my way I would fill my whole world with love,โ he sings, and the implication is heโs not sure if he has his way or not. Even as that ambiguity gives the song a greater sense of dramatic tension, uncertainty also carries within it the glimmer of hope, and the imperative to try.The stakes throughout this album are largely personal, rather than social; Nichols is singing about his life in the first person, and about his desire to forge his own individuality in a world and a music industry that make it nearly impossible to do so. Ringing through โThe Fatalist Bluesโโand The Fatalistโis a simple question: Do I have any say in how things are going to go? Itโs the question behind so much of the physical and psychic pain in the blues, and in a frustrating age that preaches self-empowerment and shames the disenfranchised, itโs a stridently modern question, too. By playing his music the way he wants to play it, by refusing to give up his creative control or accept anyone elseโs definition of the blues or indeed his own life, Carl Nichols has tried to forge an answer. Does he have any say in how things are going to go? Letโs find out.
show less