Nick Shoulders

americana · roots · folk

Nick Shoulders is a country and old-time singer based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, known for his yodeling and whistling and for a repertoire rooted in Ozark and southern traditional music. Born Nicklaus Robert Shoulders on August 19, 1989, in Little Rock and raised in nearby Roland, he grew up in a household of musicians; his father taught him whistling techniques modeled on bird calls, and his maternal grandfather, Pat M. Riley, was a gospel singer. He is self-taught on guitar, harmonica, drums, banjo and fiddle, and came up in the Fayetteville punk scene as the drummer in the politically pointed band Thunderlizards before playing banjo and harmonica with country artist Shawn James. He launched his solo career in 2017, drawing early attention through videos posted online. He tours and records with his band the Okay Crawdad, whose long-standing lineup is bassist and harmony singer Grant D'Aubin, lead guitarist Jack Studer and drummer Cheech Moosekian, and releases through Gar Hole Records, an Arkansas label he co-founded and co-owns. His records include Lonely Like Me, Okay, Crawdad (2019), Home on the Rage (2021), Heart of Night with the Lostines, All Bad (2023) and the solo acoustic Refugia Blues (2025). All Bad was the first full-length made with the band since Okay, Crawdad; Shoulders wrote much of it from the front seat of a tour van, demoed it while snowbound and recovering from Covid, and cut it with the group in a home studio on the banks of the Mississippi in New Orleans. He is also a trained illustrator, having studied at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Denver, and draws his own album art alongside murals and beer labels around Fayetteville. He is an outspoken critic of what he calls fake twang in mainstream country, arguing the genre's commercial forms have been tied too closely to whiteness and conservative politics, and he argues publicly for a wider idea of who country music belongs to.

Official site

Subscribe to this calendar