(for booking please contact nickjaina@gmail.com)
Nick Jaina is an alt-folk bandleader from Portland, OR, and his is the story of one man’s willingness to be obsessed at his own risk. He is a fine writer of prose and if it weren't for his infatuation with music and performing he’d probably be sitting up in his room churning out novels instead of songs. His band, featuring members of Jolie Holland, Loch Lomond, and Laura Gibson, is the result of five albums worth of playing in the streets, touring, sometimes living hungry, and sometimes selling out shows to the ravenous fans who’ve found them.
From his high concept records to his busking in front of national monuments and his tours in Finland, Alaska and everywhere in the continental United States, Nick loves to experiment, but he’s suffered for it. He has run out of money, slept in his car, booked tours from the road, and sacrificed relationships at home for the good of his art. The result is an incredible talent, live show, and band unparalleled in Portland. On tour they often play two shows, one in the club they were booked and one in the street to boost attendance and sell a few records. At the end of the day though all of this patience and dedication has made Nick sort of a loner, conflicted and uneasy, like captain Ahab at the end of the bar, the white whale tugging at the back of his mind. But like Hank Chinaski said in barfly: “No writer who wrote worth a damn wrote in peace."
So for us the important thing is the albums. Though he has been putting out records in some capacity since 1999 both on his own and previously with art/pop band Binary Dolls, his experiments in form began with his third solo record Wool which he wrote entirely without his trademark guitar as an exercise in songwriting and whose identity is captured in the record's nickname: “The Piano Record.”
Then came A Narrow Way. After he'd formed his current band and toured it ragged they tracked the album as a 10 piece live to 2" tape without the benefit of overdubs. The goal was to capture both the magic of his band and to celebrate ".the old recording style in the fifties and sixties of just a bunch of people in a room playing music. Like Motown you just had to be good and there was no hiding it if you weren't."
And now with this new record, A Bird In The Opera House. In a way it’s a venture in the opposite direction from A Narrow Way: a carefully crafted studio album. When the band got off the road last year Nick moved into his friend Lee Howard’s house, having been offered the opportunity to record in the studio he’d been building in the basement. Nick moved into the little upstairs bedroom and started playing some of the electric guitars lying around the house, which ended up informing the pop-ier electric feel of the album. Later Lee gave Nick an old Kay guitar, the kind that Sears used to sell for fifty bucks and told him to keep it in his room for a week and write five new songs on it. Hence track two’s title, "Another Kay Song."
Nick made this album in the in-between moments, at the times that the studio was otherwise empty, or late at night when Lee wanted to try out a new amp or microphone. It was a gradual process, allowing Nick time to sit up in his room and think about the direction of the songs. To deconstruct them, and put them back together. To live in them without consequence. The result is an intimate album that is positive and upbeat but also rich and dark. It adventures, endeavors, reflects and drifts just like any great story.
Below is the official video for the song "Days in my Room" from the new album.
