![]() ![]() ![]() That was the first day I thought ‘wow, this is what my record’s going to sound like.’ It was a really cool feeling.” I had a day off and the place all to myself I spread out and had my headphones on and guitar out, and all in one day, all these lyrics came together to this collection of songs I’d been working on. “Then in the fall of last year, I was on a solo tour supporting Mark Eitzel of American Music Club and we were in Manchester, staying at this house that’s sort of a legendary rock crash pad that has a piano and a bunch of rooms for the bands that come through. Now, we’re sitting in producer/engineer Jim Keller’s Brooklyn studio, sun streaming in through big windows over the mixing desk, as Keller cues up the album-opening track, “Felix and Adelita.” Freshly mixed just the day before, it’s Nicolay’s musical reverie come to life, and the church organ, banjo, slide guitar and brushed drumming set a sentimental, if not dark, tone. “So it’s the story of the troubled relationship of Felix and Adelita writ large on this story of a country that’s ravaged by plague.” “I wrote a couple songs about these characters which are then mapped loosely against these other songs which are about a plague,” he describes. Nicolay is quick to point out that Luck & Courage is not a concept record, however. “I don’t know anyone by those names, so I Googled them and it turns out that in Latin and Spanish the names mean Luck & Courage,” Nicolay explains. What he had was the ill-fated love story of two characters named Felix and Adelita. The keyboard/accordion/banjo, etc.-playing former keysman for The Hold Steady woke up to more than a song. ![]()
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