Gary Nicholson: ‘If you get enough people singing along/maybe you can change the world with a song…’

By David McGee

COMMON SENSE

Gary Nicholson

Qualified Records

 Summarizing Gary Nicholson’s career as a prolific, hitmaking songwriter is almost an exercise in futility, there being so much ground to cover. Earlier this month (February 7 to be exact), the reliable authority that is Craig Havighurst did a very good job of meeting the challenge of encapsuling the Nicholson legacy in introducing his Nicholson interview at the WMOT 89.5 website. To wit:

I try not to reduce songwriters to a resume of who cut what songs, but in Nicholson’s case, the names tell the story, and there are a lot of them, so buckle up. In his four and a half decades of writing in Nashville, his work has been recorded by (and often co-written with) Charley Pride, George Strait, Willie Nelson, John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver, Tanya Tucker, and Waylon Jennings, but also BB King, Etta James, Joe Bonamassa, Bonnie Raitt, Marcia Ball, David Bromberg, Keb’ Mo’, Del McCoury, Tracy Nelson, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and even Ringo Starr. Nicholson has been practically a muse for some artists –15 cuts by Buddy Guy, more than 30 by T. Graham Brown (including duets with George Jones and Leon Russell). And since 1973, he’s been in cahoots with his old friend Delbert McClinton, who’s released about 35 songs by or with Nicholson, while Nicholson has produced five of Delbert’s albums.

 I struggle to think of any modern era writer who’s reached so far and wide into country, blues, and R&B as Gary Nicholson, and he tells us it’s just how he was wired growing up in the roadhouse culture of Texas.

‘We Don’t Talk About It,’ Gary Nicholson, from Common Sense

The occasion for this overview is the release of a new Gary Nicholson album, tellingly titled Common Sense. If the name Thomas Paine springs to mind, well, that’s as it should be, for Nicholson’s Common Sense is in its own way as much about the attacks on our independence as Paine’s Common Sense was an attack on British rule impeding the colonists’ independence. Nicholson’s title track addresses the January 6 assault on democracy in unsparing terms, for example, and he tells Havinghurst, “To see the obvious denial of truth and acceptance of things that you just know intuitively are wrong, one time after another, and to see lies pervade our world, it’s discouraging.” If you didn’t know better, you’d swear Nicholson, in weighing and inveighing against the events of recent years, saw January 20, 2021, and its frightful aftermath as clear as day back then. So he proceeds to approach our time as he has approached other topics in his career: with humor, sardonic and otherwise; directly and with unflinching honesty; with abundant and deeply felt humanity; and with urgency for the moment. At its beating heart, Nicholson’s new album comes down on the side of optimism for the future, suggesting faith in common sense and common decency prevailing in the long run.

‘Make Good Trouble,’ Gary Nicholson, with Mike Finnegan on electric piano and B3, Hutch Hutchinson on bass, Tony Braunegal on drums, and John Jorgenson on guitar, with Perry Coleman joining the McCrary Sisters on backing vocals, from Common Sense

“If you get enough people singing along/maybe you can change the world with a song…” Hidden near the end of Nicholson’s witty and wise reminiscence chronicling his resorting to “Bob Dylan Whiskey” in order to raise his songwriting to Mr. Zimmerman’s level, this master songwriter doth protest too much, given his own track record over four decades. It’s a winning self-effacing move, in part because the songs surrounding “Bob Dylan’s Whiskey” tell you he’s on common ground, so to speak, with the bard in question.

To get his points across, Nicholson, who plays acoustic and electric guitars along the way, is joined by his estimable co-producer Kevin McKendree lending a virtuoso multi-instrumental touch on piano, organ, electric guitar and bass. Other top-tier musicians round out the band: Jim Hoke does multi-instrument duty himself on harmonica, dobro, steel and acoustic guitar, and sax; Mike Joyce is on bass; Lynn Williams on drums; James Pennebaker on electric and acoustic guitars; and Fabulous Superlative Harry Stinson provides the affecting backing vocals, along with the indomitable McCrary Sisters. Supplementing these core players are guitarists Rick Vito (slide and 12-string), Anson Funderburgh, Colin Linden and Yates McKendree; Luke Bulla on fiddle and mandolin; David M. Santos on acoustic bass, Kenneth Blevins on drums.

‘Woody’s Dream,’ Gary Nicholson, from Common Sense

Here, in his own voice in his own words (lyrics), Nicholson takes a hard look at that which divides our nation, an unfortunate state he addresses with bracing common sense of course. In his warm, conversational vocals, Nicholson works the late John Lewis’s dictum for social activism, “Make Good Trouble,” into a brightly shuffling, keyboard-rich litany citing historical examples of transformative, conscience-driven protests against injustice. This one is notable too for an entirely different lineup backing Nicholson, namely Mike Finnegan on electric piano and B3, Hutch Hutchinson on bass, Tony Braunegal on drums, and John Jorgenson on guitar, with Perry Coleman joining the McCrarys on backing vocals. Another bluesy groover, “We Don’t Talk About It,” with McKendree’s organ and Hoke’s harmonica adding heft to the rhythmic pulse, offers bemused but biting commentary musing on the silence now enveloping family gatherings, when those gatherings happen at all (“…election. We don’t talk about it/insurrection, we don’t talk about it”…). Vito adds some searing slide work to put the bite into the self-explanatory (and oh how relevant right now) “Follow the Money.” Acoustic-based, with guitar and harmonica most prominent, Nicholson brings it all back home in invoking and evoking another great social justice champion in the witty and wise “Woody’s Dream” wherein Nicholson offers Guthrie-like counsel on seeking a newer world, beginning with a well-considered policy change: “…think what it would be like/to let the rich folks fight.” May the oligarchs chew on that one a while. This land is your land, this land is my land. Makes sense.