VOX & GUITAR: The Jans Project, June and The Exit Wounds
What first comes to mind, when I think of Nick, is Patrick Hawley's house in Northeast Urbana, late 1985.
In memory, Patrick's house is draped in mists and drooping trees. We sit in the living room, 15 years old, playing records, snorting snuff (thanks, Jon's Pipe Shop), and dreaming of Urbana High School girls. Chief among the records is "Soul Light Season" by Turning Curious. Actually, if we listened to anything else, I don't remember it.
It took several bus transfers to get to Patrick's house from Southwest Champaign, so, more often than not, we'd split the distance and meet in Champaign's then comparatively desolate downtown. We'd hit the health food store for fizzy water and carob chunks, bother Matt Brandabur at CV Lloyde's, raid the comic shop, and then sit on the curb outside the Turning Curious practice space, listening. Eventually they'd stumble out, and give us funny looks.
Patrick and I inevitably started trying to form or join bands, and though Nick was utterly unapproachable, I somehow managed the nerve to walk up to the counter at Lincoln Square Record Service and ask him if he'd write out the lyrics to "Out Into The Light", so that my band (which had no business covering it) could cover it.
He told me the lyrics had changed, and I believe I had to stop in four or five more times before he'd actually managed to write them down. The new lyrics were not nearly as good as the originals, to my mind. They didn't jibe at all with my initial experience of hearing the album at Patrick's house. I planned to disregard the changes. But Nick actually showed up to see us play, so I did have to get with the new program. I had to wonder, tho - why would he change things, and mess with perfection?
It is doubtful that Nick knew what that record meant to people (and, I would guess, not just to the young and impressionable). It was amazing to me that something so good, something as good as anything, anywhere, was coming from... here. How could he be dissatisfied with that? And, furthermore, how was I supposed to be satisfied with so much LESS?
In 1987, Nick (or someone) contacted me to ask that I join his aptly-named band, "The Big Maybe", as second guitarist. He gave me a cassette, and I learned all the songs as quickly as I could. Mom drove me out to his house (I know, not cool...), we played through the list, no problem. I then went to see them play a set at Mabel's, no small task for a seventeen-year-old. I had to go in before the bar opened and just sit there, for hours, so I wouldn't get carded by the doorman. I do remember Jeff Evans showing up and acknowledging, with curt nod, the young doofus he'd seen so many times in the record store.
Afterward, nothing. I didn't hear from Nick again for years. The band broke up, or something.
Once enough time had passed, Nick called again, asking me to get together and play. And then, again, nothing. It happened over and over. Like Charlie Brown and the football.
By 1995 or so, I was working for Jeff at the record store (we were beyond curt nods by now), and again the idea was advanced of getting together with Nick to play. We did so, once, and again, afterward, nothing. I recall saying to Jeff, "YOU KNOW WHAT??? IF HE EVER ASKS ME TO PLAY WITH HIM AGAIN, I'M GOING TO SAY NO!!!"
And so Mr. Tuff Stuff did not hear from Nick again for about 17 years. In fact, on those few occasions when our paths did cross, I felt as though I was practically invisible to Nick. But the seed of admiration was planted early, and I still listened to everything he did and loved it.
When he did ask again, in 2012, of course, I said YES!!! This was the JANS Project, with Jeff Evans, Steve Scariano, and Steve Lindstrom. I think initially I was supposed to just play piano, perhaps just on a recording. Even this time, it was yet another two years before anything got going.
All this is not to paint Nick a flake. Rather, it is to illustrate just how much one will ultimately put up with, when something is so undeniably worth the trouble. Patrick had managed to play in Blown with Nick, in the mid-90s, which had made me super jealous. Finally, now, I was going to get my shot.
"Here's the thing," Nick said. "You play whatever you want to." And he meant it. Nick, to my recollection, never told anyone in the JANS Project what to play, on any song. He told you when he liked something, but not even in a way meant to encourage you to 'keep doing that'. He didn't care if you ever played it that way again. It was a wonderful experience, and it kept us always trying new things.
Most every weekend, I got to watch him up close. Nick taped each practice, and sent the band mp3's. When he'd done something that had astonished me (which, likely, he had), it would be there on the recording. I'd sometimes spend two weeks working out a solo of his, a few bars at a time, something he'd just tossed out during practice. And while I could gradually mimic a particular performance, I can't say I ever got a real glimpse at the mind behind it. I don't think it changed my own playing one bit. And not for lack of wishing it would.
One of my favorite moments was a solo he pulled out during the band's first run-through of "Junkyard", by Alex Chilton. Before the song started, Nick had been making sounds with his guitar that would lead a reasonable person to believe he had forgotten how to play. I remember wondering if he was having some sort of issue. But then we played the song, and this utterly beautiful, fully formed solo came out. Out of nowhere.
It wasn't just his guitar-playing, though. The guitar-playing was just the one thing I felt I had any hope of emulating. Nick had a beautiful singing voice, deep and resonant, an otherworldly knack for songwriting, and a great gift for lyrics.
I wish Nick could have known what other musicians thought of him. To many I knew, Nick was the gold standard. We looked on his works and despaired. I told him this, more than once. "Surely, Nick, you must know that your stuff is good, right? You know this is a cut above? You know it, right?" Once, I did get him to say "yeah...", but I sensed it was mainly so that I would shut up.
Steve Lindstrom was in the JANS Project just before I was, in the same role. I remember him geeking out, in print, about playing "Out Into The Light", and singing "the Berni part! I'm singing the Berni part!", or words to that effect. (Berni Proeschl, guitarist from Turning Curious.) I had much the same reaction to playing in the band, sort of a "Check me out! I'm Berni up here!" (I wasn't, but give the 15-yr-old in me a break.)
When Steve and I last spoke and discussed our experience in playing with Nick, I could sum up my end of it no better than to say, "We played with him, man! We played with one of the greats!"
It sounds like the classic overstatement, trotted out when someone you love has passed. But deep down it feels like an absolute truth. God bless you, Nick.