I'm Nick. I'm a 21 year old student of ancient history (don't ask why) and I live, work and make music in Birmingham. I've played guitar since 8 but my introduction to live music came with Jez Hellard and the Roving Blades. I met Jez in Macedonia (www.jezhellard.com - so worth a click!) and he asked me to fill in for his fiddle player as a lead guitarist a few months later back in England in Peterborough. I was lucky enough to have my first real experience of playing in a group with some amazing musicians and some great venues in an authentic countryside folk setting, which ended up having a major influence on my music later. Jez is still the best harmonica player I have ever seen. Along with Nye Parsons on double bass and Tim Palmer on fiddle amongst others it is still to this day my favourite band I have ever played in.
In the early years of my degree some friends and I started a funk/reggae/rock type band called 'Blue 52'. The number in the name was the flat number where I first met the two earliest members of the band after hearing a trumpet and a harmonica jamming it out and going on a mission to find them, guitar in hand! We played a lot of venues in Birmingham (The Yardbird, The O2 Academy) and Leicester (The Donkey, Natterjacks) and got to know the local scenes really well.
That kinda ran its course and after that (and partly during) I played in a number of smaller projects including a four piece jazz group, lead guitar in a 5 piece indie band, and started work on a duo with the trumpet player from Blue 52, Gareth. We released a 4 track EP which went pretty unnoticed. It evolved (mainly from nudges coming from my direction) into a more folky entity as opposed to jazz. In it's final form this briefly turned into Fountain. The big folk band that never really came to be. We signed to a small record label and recorded the better part of an album. There was talk of extra singers, multi-talented musicians, multiple instrument changes mid show but really this all sounds bigger than it was and the practicality of being in a band that size was a little off-putting.
For reasons far beyond this I decided to leave Fountain, which in actuality had never got off the ground, to go it alone. I've played a lot of gigs in Birmingham over the past year including a lot of charity fundraisers as well as Vale Fest, the UK's biggest student-run charity festival, and in this time have also been writing music. You can't say something like this without sounding like an arse but I was finding my voice. Working out what it really was that I wanted to put out there. I'm certainly guilty of over-thinking my music sometimes but I feel like sometimes the most personal things to me are my songs.
But anyway, what I'm doing NOW is finishing off writing the last song on a 5 track debut solo EP which is due to be recorded within a couple of months.
I currently have a track up on soundcloud which was written and recorded with Fountain called 'They Will Always'. www.soundcloud.com/nickjacksonofficial
And finally I have a video of the song 'Overgrown Track' (which will feature on the EP) on youtube at www.youtube.com/nickjacksonofficial
To those who have got this far, thanks for reading and stay tuned for an EP released date!
NJ
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