Nick Schillace

Nick Schillace’s third album of acoustic solo guitar is a phenomenal record of all original works, recorded live without overdubs. On tracks like “Soft as a Flame” and “Exponential Love,” strands of melody unravel themselves and wrap around competing strains like proteins in an RNA chain—all in an effort to give nothing so much as pure joy to the listener. Other tracks on A Rich Boy’s Measured Blues are more lilting and simple, to great effect. “Gold Dusted” or “My Side of the Mountain” might be stuck inside your brain for days, but you won’t mind. Schillace gets a little weird and deep in a raga style, too, notably on the eight-minute “Blood Meridian.” This is not a manifesto, because 50-year-olds don’t need to write manifestos. But it is such a powerfully woven-together record that it has all the power of one.

Already a successful educator (with his own music school, Orion Music Studio, and the Detroit Folk Workshop), Schillace is a master of styles, tones, and approaches to playing the guitar, banjo—and, yes, his own guitar-banjo hybrid. He first studied fingerpicking techniques at the 1984 Augusta Heritage Workshop in West Virginia with artists like John Jackson and John Cephas. He also is a member of Lac La Belle and the Post Imperial Jazz Band. An expert on how vernacular forms intersect with each other and the music of John Fahey, a copy of his 2002 graduate thesis on Fahey is available as a free PDF on his website. Schillace has toured the US and Europe extensively but remains best known in Detroit. We expect that to change with this record.