The first time I saw Nick Bays (far left in the picture) perform was when we were on tour about 6 or 7 years ago, playing at the New Brookland Tavern in Columbia, SC. The New Brook was always our favorite venue on tour, and for some reason we always knew that there was some good or bad or weird thing going to happen whenever we ended up there. Seeing Nick was one of those good things.
The Farewell Flight move du jour was that if a band sucked really bad (sometimes even if they didn't), we'd go out back and hang out or drink beers in the van. This kind of happened pretty often. Luckily, most of the bands we played with in Columbia were decent, so usually we didn't have to swelter behind the venue in the South Carolina summer heat to escape the endless double-kick beats and hardcore breakdowns of the opening acts.
No matter the quality or perceived quality of a band, I usually always checked out their first song and then played it by ear as to whether I needed to plan an escape route. At this time, Nick Bays was a 17-year old local high school kid playing by himself. I may have only stuck around because I happened to be inside grabbing another beer at the time. But I did. I didn't go back outside until after his set.
Nick commanded the guitar and the crowd and his voice in a way that when I first heard him sing, so low and so quiet, then so loud and so powerful, without breaking or pushing too hard, I knew it wasn't just another guy we'd cross paths with on the road then never see again. The thing about Nick is that he has his sound. And that's what makes a great musician. His songwriting style is his, not him sounding like someone else. I can't put an exact finger on it, but the Nick Bays sound is something that's minimal and slightly dirty, with a huge dynamic range that oscillates between loud and soft, but without doing it too much or too little. Of course there's plenty of other musicians that are like that, but his way is unique to the trinity of him, his voice, and his songwriting style.
So anyway, back when he was a junior (maybe senior) in high school, I got his EP and listened to it and made the band listen to it that tour. Although it wasn't the most polished record (give him a break, he was 17), it was pretty damn good. Nick ended up playing with us a few more times in South Carolina and Chicago and even came on the road with us just for the hell of it for a little while when we were in the midwest. Turns out he wasn't just a great musician, but a pretty sweet dude as well.
All that to say, Nick's all grown up now and making music under the name of Tall Walker. I don't know if this is a tweaked reference to the Fast and the Furious star, but I can only hope it is, and it's not because I saw the first Fast and the Furious six times in the movie theater (I was in a "finding myself" phase).
Tall Walker only has a self-titled four-song EP out right now, but it is solid, and it is something I have been listening to a lot recently. It has all the features of a great musician beginning to find himself and his songwriting in his early twenties and experimenting with some great sounds in the process. Nick definitely has a knack for taking some good pop melodies, adding a dark edge to them, sprinkling in some sultriness and then turning it into a song. The leadoff song on this EP, "Deadbeat," is no exception. It's the strongest song on the EP and one that I find listening to almost daily. It has a strong, driving drum beat over sparse verses that unfold into a dynamically full chorus with a little bit of 80's reverb on the end. A bonus is the excellent hi-hat accents throughout the song. All around, a lot of tasteful musicianship, particularly with the drums. "Clouds" is a great track as well, despite the fact that the chorus seems to detach itself a little too much from the verse. However, the overall melody is great and the bridge into the last chorus is absolute ear candy. Tall Walker definitely invokes some Leagues on this record- which isn't a bad thing- but it's also kind of a sound that Leagues has cornered (at least in terms of their guitar tones). Getting too close to it could elicit some cries of copy-catting, whether intentional or not. That's just a small misstep though.
Tall Walker seems to be a great step forward for Nick, and I have no doubt that he'll be doing some pretty great things with his art both in the near and far futures. There's about less than five bands out of the thousands I've ever played with who I knew immediately would be doing great things in their future, and Nick was certainly one of them. I can't wait to see where this album and his maturation as a musician will take him and Tall Walker. I'm certain it will be somewhere dark and beautiful.
Love you Nick, miss you. Keep still but keep going.
