An interview with Blues singer, guitarist, songwriter Nick Diaz
The joy in your playing has brought joy to so many others, including and especially me. What do you think is its secret?
What a compliment, thank you. I don’t know, I do my best to write what comes naturally, nothing forced, nothing with too much ego behind it and nothing trying to sound like anyone or anything else. There’s always a nod to influences, but at this point in the game, after playing for over 30 years, I just write what feels good and “right” and let it fly into the world. I think that’connects with people in its own natural way.
What are the experiences of your life that led you to see music as a spiritual endeavor?
Seeing Radiohead on their “Hail to the Thief” tour at the New Orleans Lakefront Arena around 2003 and how it moved people. Same with seeing Hall and Oates at New Orleans Jazz Fest once, and Tom Petty in New Jersey. You could also say the time I spent living in New Orleans (’98-’05), music is more than just entertainment, a job or hobby there, it is a spiritual experience both as a listener and as a performer. Music floats through the air like magic there.
Life is more than just music, is there any other field that has influence on your music?
Travel, experiencing other places and cultures and how the rhythm of life rolls there. Local beauty, architecture, and new spontaneous conversation can all serve as influence. We’re all human after all, and we all share common threads in the basic necessary needs such as food, warmth, a roof over our heads, community, love, work, etc … and in the back of my mind I do my best to always remember that when writing…
Where does your creative drive come from?
It’s just gotta come out… I’ve thought about it often and don’t really have an answer, creating is just something I love to do. I love painting too. I wish I made more time for it, honestly.
But in your formative, figuring things out, years, whose sense of rhythm did you admire? Who has impacted you rhythmically?
In the beginning, the Texas blues shuffle and the Rhumba Blues beat really spoke to me. As a Texas blues guitarist, I’d be lying if I didn’t say Stevie Ray was the portal to discovering the older legends. And his band Double Trouble carried a pretty mean shuffle when you get down to it. I remember discovering some Rhumbas via Buddy Guy on his “Feels Like Rain” album, but also through Sonny Rollins “St. Thomas” which I guess leans more towards a Caribbean vibe, but in my head as a blues guy, it had some rhumba in it cause of all the tom tom drum work. I love drummers, and rhythm, and I have always done my best to surround myself with great drummers, go out and watch and listen to great drummers. I latched onto to Brian Blade, John Bonham, Stanton Moore, Clyde Austin Stubblefield (James Brown), etc. at an early age, and I just gravitated towards playing my guitar like a drum, just like the old saying “everything’s a drum”.
What are you doing to keep it relevant today, to develop it and present it to the youth?
I’m always listening … to music, to life, to people, hoping that in it’s own way, the music is a presentation and combo of both experience and something fresh and new. Also exploring new gear, in the studio and on stage. I often perform with younger people, and pay attention to what they’re listening to and doing as well. Youth has an incredible energy for presenting and melding new ideas.
Do you have any interesting stories about the making of the new album?
It was a fun experience, it always is. I originally had planned on having a few OG blues covers in the track listing, but after playing it for Gulf Coast Records blues artist Mike Zito, he suggested circling back around and adding a few more originals in their place because he enjoyed the stories I was telling in my original writings so much. That was pretty cool.
How it was formed your new album Buenos Diaz – Fox Street Blues – 2024.
Making a blues rock record was ground zero for me, it’s the genre of music that touched me the most as a young guitar player. It took me a while to find the confidence to want to make any kind of blues record, because I knew if I fell short, it could easily sound flat. But as I dove in, I think I gave it the attention it needed, and I really dug into the studio guitar sounds. The making of Fox Street Blues coincided with the birth of my studio The Tone Shack too, which allowed me the freedom to explore the songs and genre in depth and at a relaxed pace. As I said before, it originally had a few traditional blues covers on it, but after a conversation with blues ace Mike Zito, he suggested revisiting the recording process with more originals because he enjoyed listening to them. So I went back to the song vault, pulled out some old tracks I’d written during my early 2000’s New York days, tore them apart, and re wrote new material (Nothing to Lose, Where’s the Funk in the Neighborhood) based on the drum tracks we’d made at a studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It all came together pretty easily and was a fun and new approach for me, digging into old material like that. I do still have the blues covers in the vault and will be releasing them later this year as an EP.
Do you share the opinion that your live albums are some of your best records? What is it about you and your music that works so well for live recordings?
We haven’t released a live album JUST yet 🙂 But I do have one slighted for release soon, “Live at Antone’s” in Austin, Tx. And I do believe it’s a good one and captures the rawness, energy and emotion of what the band sounds like.
And how did you select the musicians who play on the album?
They’re part of the live band, so it was an easy choice. Jeff Olson, a native Austinite and standout drummer, has been in and out of Buenos Diaz for some 11 years. He’s also spent time behind the kit for White Denim, David Ramirez, and a number of other fantastic acts. Mark Henne played drums on some tracks as well, has drummed for Black Joe Lewis and currently drums for Alejandro Escovedo. Drummer Matty Amendola (son of former Modern Drummer editor Billy Amendola) was part of the “New York” tracks. Sam Powell rounds it out on keys and is currently touring with country act William Beckmann.
How have you managed to so successfully pull so much of your life and personality through so much of your music?
I ‘ve just kind of always marched to my own beat, its always made sense to me to do things that way. Even when I study other people’s songs, I kind of always just took the meat and potatoes of it and then ran with it making it my own. Maybe I was a little impatient to sit there and study longer to what just seemed like regurgitating things note for note to me, and hey, someone else had already played it that way, but also because it just felt natural to do it my way. I do have an immense respect, however, for people who can transcribe songs and play them back well, maybe that’s a skill you pick up more in formal study, and since I’m a self taught musician, maybe that’s something I lack a little… I should go work on that more, after all, there’s always things we can all work on musically, the learning never ends.
Did your sound evolve during that time?
The sound is always evolving. Blues is always at the foundation of whatever I do, but I’m all about exploring blues, country, jazz, rock, folk, punk, etc. And at the end of the day, I think good music is just good music, and that almost any element of any genre can be found in a good song. Those titles and genres exist for business people to sell, critique and award things as they see fit after all. That stuff doesn’t mean much to me, it never really has.
What´s been the highlights in your life and career so far?
When I was 18, I won a music contest they held down at a local bar in Houston, Tx for playing lead blues guitar, that’s when I thought, “hey I can do this music thing!” That was pretty cool. Completing university was a highlight, I a big fan of education. Right after at 23 I got the privilege to travel to play in Bregenz, Austria with New Orleans Saxophonist Gary Brown. During my late 20s and NY days, I got to perform with pop punk act Just Kait, we were on MTV and toured the country on a bus playing huge venues some of which were a couple sold out show at the Nokia Theater in Times Square and also at the one next to the Forum in LA. I frequented the popular NY bar The Bitter End at that time as well with early versions of Buenos Diaz playing to packed houses. And shoot, living in NY itself was a highlight. Performing at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco was special while playing in LA on the Sunset Strip was cool too (Olympic track star Carl Lewis attended the whole show). Last year in Austin, we performed for the South Congress Hotel summer concert series to some 1200 people, and there was line around the block to get in while I also got to play lead guitar at the Moody Theater with Alejandro Escovedo for his Texas Songwriter Hall of Fame induction. One of my favorite studio stories is recording some blues tracks in the basement of an hold Manhattan building where they used to work on the Atom Bomb. It was an all analog session with select members of the Daptone Records family and other close friends. Buenos Diaz itself has been part of the SXSW Music festival 4 times over as an official artist, and I love that I’ve just stuck with it after all these years. I love that I finally have my own studio to work out of and I’m excited for the things to come out of that space. Most recently I had the privilege of being awarded both the the Live Music Fund and The Elevate Grants from the City of Austin to use towards forwarding the band and band related business. And lastly but most importantly, I just got married in Argentina earlier this year!
Your life is an open book or that your life is always open to new experiences, or something else?
I wouldn’t say my life is an open book, I definitely hold some personal things close to the chest. But I’m definitely open to new experiences. New adventures intrigue me and keep life fresh and interesting.
What would you say characterizes Jazz scene in comparison to other local scenes and circuits?
Jazz scenes always seem a little insular to me, a little pretentious. There’s an air about the musicians wanting to prove how much they know about the art form, where they studied, who they studied under and that they can push it forward more than the next guy. The audience can be slightly similar too, who has the largest collection, who knows the most history or knows most about the players and their lives. And if you can’t speak the language, then you’re almost automatically out, ha! And I get it, jazz is hard to play, people work hard to arrive at a place where they can properly deliver and perform the art form, and it’s is history deep. Rock, folk, funk, indie, country and blues scenes, they’ve always just felt a little more inviting and communal. More about the people, less about what you know. I often hear it’s hard to make a good buck in the jazz scene too, a little easier in alternative scenes.
Do you think there is an audience for young people to become future audiences and fans?
It’s music, it will always have an audience, it speaks to people. And some group of young people will always gravitate towards it. They’ll come together to share it, listen to it, study it, push it forward… it’s one of our few great cultural exports after all, as United Statesers, alongside baseball and now the iPhone, ha ha!
By Laura Wulff
