 Nick
Curran brought his unique sounds to the Beale
on Broadway for a very appreciated performance!
It seems when a traveling band finds a club they
like, they stick with it! This makes the Beale
their blues 'home away from home', as they played
it each visit to St. Louis.
Nick Curran is an original new talent who has
captured a golden musical moment in time and made
it his own. A twenty-first century hybrid of Little
Richard and T-Bone Walker, he not only skillfully
reinterprets R&B and jump blues classics in
the exact style of the original recordings, he
also crafts original tunes that stand up very
well to the masters. On Doctor Velvet, his national
debut recording on Blind Pig Records, the young
guitarist/vocalist displays a veteran's mastery
of the nuances of roots rock and blues idioms.
It's surprising that someone so young could breathe
new life into musical forms that are more than
twice his age, yet do it in such a way that makes
the familiar sound startlingly new.
 One
of the first things you notice upon listening
to Nick Curran's recordings is how much they actually
sound like classic R&B records from the late
40's and early 50's. If they weren't on one of
those little silver discs, you'd swear you were
listening to rare 45s or 78s. Using a live, one-take
technique and vintage recording equipment, Curran
uncannily manages to recreate not only the sound
but also the spirit of those earlier, wonderful
times. At 15 Nick was playing guitar with his
father's blues band, Mike Curran and the Tremors.
Rockabilly drew Nick's interest, and his path
led him to an introduction with rockabilly legend
Ronnie Dawson.
He quickly joined Dawson's band and began his
first national tour, playing guitar with Dawson
for the next six months. Word soon gets out, and
before long his reputation as a solid guitarist
was spreading throughout the music community.
Following Dawson's tour, he was soon back out
on the road with Texas rockabilly queen Kim Lenz.
 His
guitar work on that tour impressed Lenz so much
she asked Nick to move from New England to Dallas
to join her backup band, the Jaguars. He stayed
in that band for two years, getting some recording
experience along the way on one of Lenz' albums
(The One And Only).
One of the local musicians who took notice of
Nick's emergence on the Austin scene was Jimmie
Vaughan. Impressed by what he heard on Curran's
CDs, he invited Nick to sit in with him at a show
at Antone's and later, in a Blues Revue interview,
 cited
Curran as one of his favorite up-and-comers, calling
him "just a total ass-kicker."
When it came time for Nick to record his national
debut on Blind Pig Records, Vaughan was happy
to join Curran in the studio to guest on a couple
of tracks.
Now a W.C. Handy Nominee, Nick Curran is a rising
star on the Blues Circuit. We wish the band the
greatest success, and we at STLBlues look forward
to seeing Nick play St. Louis for many years to
come!
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