Nick Arkin’s love of music started at an early age. Hailing from the great state of Michigan, Arkin moved to Florida and then onto Birmingham, Al..He learned to play the alto saxophone, hoping to become a jazz musician. As time went by, he grew enthralled with the angst-ridden genres of grunge and heavy metal, but also gathered inspiration from musicians like Billy Joel, David Bowie, and Elvis. Utilizing these inspirations, Nick normally writes with acoustic instruments, favoring the full body sounds to heavy distortion, but still enjoys a good stomp box. Unlike most popular musicians, Nick has a deep baritone voice with a heavy vibrato. Nick has performed with numerous bands throughout the years before deciding to go solo, developing a unique sound that most people find hard to describe.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with Nick about his latest project, technology, challenges and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)
I am located in Birmingham Alabama, but I am originally from lansing Michigan. I guess you could really say I’m from all over…a definite troubadour of sorts. I do have tendency to return back to the blackhole known as Birmingham though,lol. Seems like most people from here do. The music I create is what I would call alternative singer songwriter. Definitely with the tendency to be melancholic. So if you took an alt rock band from the 90s, who were influenced by punk, hair metal, etc…Have them come out in the 2000s, where they grow up on 90s alt rock, heavy metal, numetal, and throw in a love for acoustic guitars and a classically trained opera singer..you get me!
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?
My family has always been big in music, mom and dad’s side…so I was exposed to it from an early age. I first decided to play music when I saw my first jazz concert when I was about 6. I immediately wanted to learn how to play the saxophone after that…which I did. As far as being a die hard musician…I have to give that credit to Billy Joel…his music really started me on the path of wanting to be a performer in the “pop” sense instead of just sticking to classical and jazz. His music was unlike anything else and I was astounded by how talented the man is. Then from there…it just became everything to me. Learning every instrument I could, learning how to record…you ask what motivates me to keep going? I honestly can say I cannot imagine myself doing anything else. I cannot imagine my life without music…without creating it and performing it. There is no future for me if I cannot do those things. I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but it’s the truth.
How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?
As far as my ep “finding beauty in sadness”, I basically decided a few different things, because I wrote a lot of songs back in 2009/2010. Probably about three albums worth. They ranged from heavy rock to the singer songwriter vibe I have now. Initially what I tried to do was to separate the songs into different projects. One project was called Shivering Heart and the other was just myself solo. With Shivering Heart, I still wrote all the parts to the different songs…but the idea was to be like NIN or Foo Fighters, where I was going to hire people to play the parts live. Well, that kinda fell on its face…so I ditched several songs, redid several songs and ended up sitting on it for a number of years. Finally last year I said screw it and released the ep. The full album I hope to release this year will be a full length album with many full band arrangements that aren’t on the ep as well as some new songs nobody knows.
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
One of the biggest challenges I’ve come across in this age of music is that there are literally hundreds of thousands of “musicians” out there who want attention, who believe they got something to say, or that they’re hot shit and its soooo easy to put music out online, that you literally have to bite and claw and rake people’s eyes out to get noticed through the massive cloud that is the ever engulfing web. Dont get me wrong…..there are thousands of artists out there that deserve to be heard, that have amazing talent….but there are even more than ever that shove their crap in people’s faces that you have to pay people to listen to your music or any of the 100s of other pay to play gimmicks that are out there. The main way social media has helped me is allowing me to network with people across the country…the world even…to help get gigs or to share my music with . It’s a somewhat rare thing, but it does happen.
What was the last song you listened to?
Different shade of green by incubus
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
Mp3s totally…super convenient, still can get amazing sound quality and storage capacities. People will argue that vinyl is better…its got that nice warm sound…but you can get that into a CD or mp3…it just depends on how the artist originally recorded it. Also a lot of people dont realize..that “warmth” they love so much…its technically noise from the machine. The mechanics of the machine spinning creating a low based hum.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
I personally love my “old school” ipod. I really dont care for streaming just like I dont like radio…all the commercials drive me insane. I have god knows how many thousands of songs stored on it and I can listen to whatever I want to. I mean event spotify is starting to realize they aren’t making any money by letting people stream the music for ‘free”, that they’re trying to convince people to pay a subscription to download your songs and listen to them whenever you want, which is exactly what apple did with ipod for years! So its turned full circle, which makes me laugh.
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
My Facebook page is a big one, I constantly am uploading pice,videos, and news on a regular basis. Quick and easy, pretty much everybody has Facebook and I read my messages, etc. Www.facebook.com/nickarkin Or the other way is my website, which you’ll find out news, music, etc…but also any special promos I may be doing for fans on my email list. So www.nickarkin.com for that.
Anything else before we sign off?
I just want to say thank you very much for your time, I hope that every new fan I make I get to meet or knows they can always reach out to me and say hello. I’m very excited about this journey and I welcome you to be a part in it.
