Nick Shoulders Tickets

‘All Bad’, the latest album from Nick Shoulders, released via Gar Hole Records (a label founded and co-owned by Shoulders), ultimately encapsulates everything that makes Shoulders’ inimitable form of country music so vital: a heady balance of dazzling musicianship and punk defiance, coupled with gritty eccentricity and a generational connection to the roots of the genre. The album emerged from the chaos of the post-pandemic world, and manages to be a plea for patience as much as a call to action. With a singing style deeply rooted in his family’s musical lineage and a heartfelt reverence for his lifelong home of mountainous Arkansas, the incisive yet wildly jubilant ‘All Bad’ vocally objects to the reckless destruction of the natural landscape and ever-eroding line between church and state, while still offering plenty of joy and dance-ready rhythms. Having recently experienced their first years of rapid growth and relentless touring, Nick and his longtime band, the Okay Crawdad, wrote and recorded ‘All Bad’ while confronting a nation profoundly changed by development and industrialization run rampant. Spanning a variety of early country styles, the album’s infectious rallying cry ‘Won’t Fence Us In’ shines alongside everything from jangling cajun waltzes to surf-rock infused bluesy ballads–all tied together by a voice seemingly out of place in this century, yet ever ready to speak up about its problems. 

“The idea of country music as our sacred inheritance as opposed to a marketing scheme has been central to my work for a while now,” says Shoulders. “It’s about finding collective liberation in our connection to the landscape, to ancient singing traditions, to a way of producing music that predates the industry built around it. This album came from tapping into what my band and I did as street performers and moldy little honky-tonkers: it’s continuing that dedication to making music that’s honest about the lives we’re actually living, rather than trying to create a more marketable reality.”