Stomping Nick Jackman is a one-man-band from Lyttelton, New Zealand, who fuses primitive garage punk with blues and Appalachian folk. His sound has been described as “pounding rhythms, searing blasts of harmonica, and a gutsy roar that reach back decades beyond the last fad.”
Stomping Nick sings and plays harmonica, guitar and drums all at the same time, the old school way, without the aid of loop pedals, backing tracks, or any of those other fancy tricks. The harmonica is Nick’s weapon of choice and a number of influences shape his harmonica style. As well as the blues harp masters such as Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson, other influences as diverse as bluegrass fiddle and Jimi Hendrix can be heard when Stomping Nick gets his jaw swinging. Underpinning the harmonica, Nick’s feet and hands provide a solid rumble of drums and growling guitar to get the people in the groove, while he sings, amongst other things, songs about trains and trainwrecks, magic whiskey, getting high, sinking low, and dancing with the devil.
Stomping Nick is an experienced, battle-hardened performer, having played hundreds of shows in diverse places including bars, festivals, house parties, country halls, flatdeck trucks, beer tents, sheds, shacks and street corners. Over the years he has worked as a drummer, a guitar picker, a bassman, a harmonica player, a banjo plucker, a washboard scrubber, a tambourine jangler and a spoon rattler. Somewhere along the way he learned how to ditch the band and do it all himself.
In this interview feature, we speak with Nick about the new EP, influences, surviving the digital age and much more.
Q&A, links and a stream of Shake For Your Cake can be found 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 from New Zealand, based in the city of Christchurch. I like to play punk blues, which combines my love of old blues with my love of primitive garage rock and raw sounds like distortion and noise. Most of the time I perform as a one-man-band, singing and playing guitar, harmonica and drums all at the same time.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to stay the course?
It’s never been something I’ve had to force myself to do. I have been interested in melody and rhythm since before I can remember and later I developed a strong appreciation of noise. When I was five, my first instrument was a pair of bongo drums and since then I have always sung and played something. I’m just hooked on the power and beauty of sound waves and their vibrations and I love how you can make endless new combinations of these waves and mix them with language. So it’s not hard for me to keep going with this. I don’t really have any other comparable interests in my life, and I have never felt motivated to develop any other skillset outside of music that I could make a decent living from.
Who or what are your biggest influences when it comes to your creativity?
Old blues is a big influence and endless source of inspiration. I listen regularly to a lot of old recordings from the 1920s to the 1960s. There are so many blues artists I love but it’s probably worth mentioning one in particular, Joe Hill Louis, who was a Memphis one-man-band in the 1950s. My one-man-band act is based a lot on his, but my sound is much different. I have also been influenced by some of the great rock stylists of the 1960s, in particular, The Stooges, The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground and The Doors. I love raw, primitive punk sounds and bands that combine punk and blues. The Gun Club is a big influence on me for doing this and I totally dig bands like The White Stripes, Soledad Brothers and The Gories. I also like the take on punk blues that came out of Melbourne, Australia – artists like Nick Cave and particularly Hugo Race.
How is your new release different than previous ones? Did you set out to accomplish anything specific?
“Shake For Your Cake”, my second album, took much longer to record. It was 2011 when I started. During that year, Christchurch experienced thousands of earthquakes that destroyed much of the city and changed people’s lives forever. The quakes messed a lot with people’s heads and everyone reacted differently to them. I experienced a strong feeling of being physically and mentally unsettled, which did not help the production process. I continued making recordings over the next few years but it didn’t seem the right time to release them, although I continued to perform live. For part of this time I lived in my van, traveling around New Zealand and putting on shows, mostly in the small towns. I even tried living in Australia for a brief period before deciding New Zealand is where it’s at for me. Eventually, the unsettled feeling passed and I started living permanently back in Christchurch. That’s when it seemed right to finish the album and release it.
Although technical ability in music is nowhere near as important to me as feel and emotion I have tried to push the boundaries of what is possible with the one-man-band art form. On “Shake For Your Cake” I was trying to demonstrate how my ability to play all the instruments at once had progressed, although my skill level is even higher now since that album was produced. Both my albums are live in the studio recordings but “Shake For Your Cake” does have a track at the end with overdubs.
Do you face any challenges as an indie musician in a digital age? On the flip side, how has technology helped you (if it has)?
Regarding music, I love the digital age. It creates so many opportunities for researching, networking, sales, marketing and raising capital that didn’t exist once for independent artists. The internet has helped me become a much better musician by giving me access to information I may never have found otherwise. It has also been great for exposure to new music and for being discovered. Today I got an email from someone in Western Australia who first heard me on holiday in Bali. His hairdresser had one of my songs on his iPod. Now he has downloaded my music from iTunes and he’s sharing my Youtube videos with his friends, who have similar tastes. This is just one small example of the power of the internet. Although a lot of the traditional gatekeepers still exist in the music industry the internet provides many ways to bypass the gate.
It is a challenge to make money from recorded music but it is possible. I am definitely an optimist in this regard. Most of my income is from live performance but I am just starting to look now at ways to seriously increase music sales. A lot of people these days are listening but not buying – that’s ok. Some people steal my music via illegal downloading but I’m becoming much more relaxed about all this. These people aren’t going to buy anyway but may still spread my music. There are people out there who are buying and you just have to use the internet to find them, or let them find you. The big challenge is getting noticed amongst the millions of other talented artists and general distractions we see every day online.
How do you feel about streaming services? Any romantic attachments to the physical formats: vinyl, 8-track, cassettes, CDs?
I’m starting to appreciate Spotify and other streaming services. People do discover you on them. It’s fascinating to look at the analytics. Streaming is a good tool for being noticed but the royalties are shocking. I don’t have romantic attachments to any of those physical formats. I have only released on CD so far but I may try some of the other formats in the future. People are on to me all the time to release on vinyl. Who would have thought cassettes would make a small comeback? Some kind of cassette release could be fun.
Where can we follow you online and hear more music?
- Website: www.stompingnick.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/stompingnick.jackman
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/StompingNickJackman
- Bandcamp: stompingnick.bandcamp.com/
- Twitter: twitter.com/StompingNick
Anything else before we sign off?
Thank you for this opportunity to talk about my music. I like the approach you take with your website.
