Founder, Wild Honey Foundation
Musically I was always blown away by Nick. Always amazed by the prolific nature of his songwriting and performing — he seemed pretty fearless to me.
They (b-lovers/Turning Curious) would routinely debut a half a dozen new songs every time they played—and they played twice a month. I mean, who else comes up with a dozen new songs a month? And they were good songs. It was impressive. At the time, other bands would do the same songs every time, or a new song every couple months, but for Nick, it was an endless string of great material. They would routinely intro five or six new songs every time they played. I hope Steve Scariano has tapes from the shows!
I think about those days a lot because it was important — there was a lot of good stuff going on, a lot of lifelong friendships were made in those years.
For me there was a point where his guitar playing took a big leap. Here’s this guy that has a million great songs and all of a sudden he was playing guitar at a whole other level. I remember that evolution of his talents. He seemed fully formed as a songwriter, basically at the beginning.
I think his desire to do new stuff, the desire to do more, was in a way, both his greatness and a bit of a handicap. He never thought he was good enough, so he worked really hard at getting better and better and better and as the years went on, he became less and less willing to share any of it
I remember Paul (Chastain) was prolific at that time too, but he was maybe 50% of what Nick was doing — but that was 50% of A LOT. Nick was writing five records worth of material a year, and getting better by leaps and bounds.
But my thing was always, where along the way did his confidence and perfectionism give way to a sort of raging insecurity? That was the big sadness of it all for me.