{"id":18139,"date":"2020-02-08T05:30:59","date_gmt":"2020-02-08T10:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=18139"},"modified":"2020-01-18T12:59:52","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T17:59:52","slug":"rich-nelson-seconding-that-emotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/02\/08\/rich-nelson-seconding-that-emotion\/","title":{"rendered":"Rich Nelson: Seconding That Emotion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It\u2019s not unknown for a creative artist to work in two very different media. But it\u2019s remarkable when an artist achieves success in both. That\u2019s what has happened in the case of Rich Nelson. Detroit-raised and living in Western North Carolina since 2005, Nelson is an acclaimed portraiture and landscape painter. He\u2019s also an accomplished rock musician; his group The Rich Nelson Band released an album, Ever Since Now<\/i>, in 2018 (and a follow-up, Twenty Twenty Hearing<\/i>, in early 2020). And as Nelson explains, the two artistic disciplines inform each other in some unexpected ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey run along parallel tracks,\u201d Nelson says. \u201cThe difference is that with one pursuit\u2014painting\u2014you\u2019re essentially on your own.\u201d For him, playing music is more of a collaborative, shared endeavor. \u201cI always compare being in a band to being in a gang,\u201d he says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

But Nelson believes that the creative process at the root of painting and making music is essentially the same. \u201cYou start with some type of inspiration, then you kind of hammer [a creation] into being,\u201d he explains. \u201cAnd then you go on to the next thing.\u201d Nelson focuses on the ongoing nature of the process. \u201cI call it \u2018going around the horn,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s always, \u2018Okay, let\u2019s do it again!\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

In perhaps subtly different ways, both pursuits help to satisfy Nelson\u2019s creative inclinations. \u201cI do like working alone as a painter,\u201d he acknowledges. \u201cBut then, I really love the camaraderie of a band, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

A goal of the realistic style in which Nelson paints is not only to document how the subject looks, but also to capture the ineffable essence of that subject. And Nelson says that there\u2019s an equivalent to that aesthetic in the songwriting process, too.<\/p>\n

With painting, \u201cit\u2019s not \u2018gilding the lily,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cHopefully, it\u2019s about capturing what, in that person, you are truly responding to. I usually find something to love in all my clients; it\u2019s the same with landscapes. I just love appreciating creation.\u201d In part, then, he says that his goal as a painter is \u201cto get some of that feeling of that relationship into the painting.\u201d Songwriting starts with its own equivalent. \u201cWhen I pick up my guitar or sit at the piano, it\u2019s a blank canvas,\u201d Nelson says.<\/p>\n

In Rich Nelson\u2019s hands, though, the two artistic pursuits do have their differences. While his landscapes and portraits have a sophisticated and refined\u2014though emotionally resonant\u2014character, the artists whose work informs Nelson\u2019s original music are possessed of a more street-level sensibility. He cites the heyday of hard rock\u2019s beginnings as a touchstone. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was seven in 1968,\u201d Nelson says. \u201cAnd music hit me hard when I was a little kid in Detroit. By the time I discovered the music that I really loved\u2014glam rock like Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Mott the Hoople and Queen\u2014it just was so powerful. And that never goes away; it leaves a permanent imprint.\u201d And music\u2019s emotional content\u2014though made up of different feelings than ones evoked by Nelson\u2019s paintings\u2014 is inescapable. \u201cThe emotion [of that music] scared me a little bit,\u201d he admits. \u201cFor me, as an eight year old hearing Jimi Hendrix, it was a little terrifying. But I dug it.\u201d <\/p>\n

The conversation eventually comes back around to the ways in which Nelson\u2019s approaches to the canvas and music-making are alike. \u201cBecause you\u2019ve been \u2018around the horn\u2019 so many times, it\u2019s not like every painting looks like it\u2019s done by a different person or every song sounds like it\u2019s been written or performed by a different person,\u201d he observes. \u201cAt the end of the day, you\u2019re just who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson says that the songs on Ever Since Now<\/i> represent an effort to make music with a wide appeal. He says his music is \u201cabout connecting with an audience, not dazzling them with technical skills.\u201d Like his work on the canvas, Rich Nelson says that the music is \u201cmore about the emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not unknown for a creative artist to work in two very different media. But it\u2019s remarkable when an artist achieves success in both. That\u2019s what has happened in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62],"tags":[4092],"class_list":["post-18139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-rich-nelson","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18139"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18142,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18139\/revisions\/18142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}