Live and Local: Nick Andrew Staver
Nick Andrew Staver plays a resonator.
Well, he usually has two of them with him when I’ve seen him play live. And I imagine if you handed him a guitar…you know, a wooden one… he’d probably do ok with that, too.
For those of you who may not know, a resonator is essentially a guitar with a round metal element on the body, kind of looks like a flying saucer landed inside the guitar. Some have wooden bodies; others are all metal. They’re sometimes played with a slide, other times exactly like you’d play a guitar. The sound is bluesy as all get-out.
Nick usually shows up with two metal ones…one is shiny and silver, the other is more of a brass color.
The interesting thing about blues is that, on the surface, it’s very simple. A lot of people (myself included) who are working on their guitar skills often start with blues. It’s a straightforward chord structure, and if you learn a few blues songs, you’re not too far from knowing a bunch more. Plus, it sounds cool as hell.
That said, me playing 12 bar blues on guitar, and Nick Andrew Staver doing so… even if it were the same song… is like comparing painting the steps of your front porch with someone painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Side note: I have nick’s CD, but Grant took possession of it, so it’s a little rough looking, but he didn’t damage the disc itself. He did the same with Peter Wile’s CD and one from Sarah Vaughan. Of all my CDs, those are the three he chose to try to eat. Take from that what you will.
The first time I saw Nick play, I saw a guy sitting up there with a resonator, so I was all in from the jump. He typically plays a mix of originals, classic rock standards, and old-school blues tunes. The first time I saw him, I immediately became “that guy”… the one where, toward the end of the set when you’re kind of casting around for suggestions, I asked for Tom Waits’ “Old 55”. He rolled his eyes a little (rightfully so), but he managed to pull it out and did it quite well.
I realize asking a blues man for “Old 55” is half a step away from yelling “freebird!” from the back of the room (I’ve done that in the past, too…most often to Mat Morris ). Nick is a good guy and a consummate professional, so he handles my bullshit incredibly well, even when I ask him for some obscure Son House song that no one else probably wants to hear, and then ask him for it again next time I saw him, because I’m old and I forget things.
Nick’s original songs are incredibly diverse and interesting. He’s one of a few incredibly talented songwriters that play here locally. Other ones that come to mind are Peter Wile and Mike Kell, but that’s not all of them. I just like those guys because I love folk and blues and creative bluesy guitar. There are a fair amount of songwriters that…well, I kinda wish they would do some more covers… but this is not that. Next time you see Nick, grab his CD. It’s very well arranged and produced, and the music is interesting and sounds great.
One of the things that make someone stand out for me, though, is the detail…the way they embellish and make cover songs their own. For example, one cover Nick did when I saw him the other night was Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide. Now, this a song a lot of people cover, so I’ve heard it many times. Nick sings it in a deep and thoughtful way, not trying to emulate Stevie Nicks, but making the feeling of the song the same while voicing it as himself. And the guitar work (Lindsey Buckingham is a violently underrated guitarist), is also very much his own.
I THINK he may have the resonator tuned down a bit from standard tuning, so I’m going to mention chords, but that’s based on what I saw. I don’t have perfect pitch, so I can’t tell you when your brakes screech, that’s a B-flat or anything like that, and I can’t tell what the notes are if Nick tunes down a step or something…but what I’m going to say is based on the fingerings I saw, not the actual notes.
That song typically uses a G chord as the root, but in some versions I’ve seen, people replace it with a B over G chord, which gives it a different tone and vibe that’s distinctive. It’s also often played with a capo around the third fret.
Nick was playing without a capo, and it sounded a little different to me than what I was used to. I noticed, eventually, that he wasn’t just playing a B/G or a G chord at the root, but he walked “up” to the G chord by playing the B/G then going to the G. I realize this is a little in the weeds for some of you, and - again – I’m not even necessarily talking about the actual notes coming out of his resonator, because of the tuning. I invite Nick to talk about this if he should read this or just tell me I’m out of my god damn mind.
I mention it to illustrate the way a musician can take a song that we all know and make art from it that’s not a replication, but a basis for creation on the spot. That’s the basis of jazz, and often is the best part of other types of music in live performance. At the end of the day, jazz came from the blues, as did everything else that’s good in this world.
Nick tours a lot, so he’s not around town all the time. When he is, it’s typically in bunches and then he rolls up his rug and heads west, or south. So catch him if you can before he goes again, and by all means check out his music wherever you can stream it, or grab his CD and try not to have your dog run off with it. You won’t be sorry.