Thanks to my most reliable musical gumshoe, 87 year old Demetra Angelides from Manchester, the Greek-born outlaw country aficionado, for tipping me off that Austin Lucas would be swinging through Nashua this Sunday night for a show at the Thirsty Turtle Tavern.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a real good show to catch if you\u2019re into grit country, songs sung with a longing for a peaceful state of mind. Anxiety plays a theme, as does isolation and redemption in many of Lucas\u2019s songs, but the tattooed road warrior from Indiana is doing the only thing, he says, that\u2019s worth doing: playing music.<\/p>\n
You hear George Jones and echos of all the folkies from Macdougal Street in Lucas\u2019s sweet poetry. \u201cRolling Stone\u201d magazine recently voted him one of the \u201cTop 10 New Country Artists.\u201d Not bad.<\/p>\n
And although the nights are long and morning much too short for Lucas, who is out supporting his latest effort, \u201cBetween the Moon and the Midwest,\u201d the man worries less about the miles he\u2019s traveled, and really just wants to get a handle on this state called New Hampshire.<\/p>\n
Sound Check caught up with Lucas after his show in Atlanta and we learned about the dangers of nutrition-free pop country music, and how easy it is to have principles when \u201cnobody is asking you to sell out.\u201d<\/p>\n
1. Have you ever played NH before and what do you hear about the Nashua music scene?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve only once ever played in NH. It was a house show in Portsmouth in 2006. It was a fun little show for sure. Honestly though, I know very little about the scene in NH. I\u2019ve driven through it on my way to Maine a bunch though and it\u2019s a beautiful place. I\u2019m very much looking forward to getting to know it better.<\/p>\n
2. Are you a better writer when life has you on the ropes?<\/p>\n
Life always has me on the ropes probably so that\u2019s a hard one to qualify with any precision. Generally speaking, this is just real talk. I have a lot of anxiety and so even when things are looking up. I have something eating at me to write about.<\/p>\n
3. What was the first song you wrote where you went, \u201cHey, I think I can do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
No idea, I\u2019ve been writing songs for so long that I really can\u2019t remember the moment. I guess that\u2019s the privilege of someone who was raised by a songwriter. It\u2019s just sort of always been something I did. That being said, I\u2019m generally still trying to decide if it\u2019s really something I can do well or not. Certainly, I\u2019m in a constant state of trying to improve myself as a writer. My hope is that one day I\u2019ll be able to look back and be proud that I did nothing but get better throughout the years.<\/p>\n
4. What\u2019s one compromise you won\u2019t make in the music business in order to drink from that golden cup? The one that brings you massive record sales and legions of new fans.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know, there are probably too many to list. Then again, it\u2019s easy to have principles when nobody is asking you to sell out.<\/p>\n
5. What\u2019s your stance on pop country? Are the outlaw country fans really just snobs, or are we all missing out on something that millions of others stand behind?<\/p>\n
My stance on this, is that it\u2019s corporate pop music. Which overall has increasingly been becoming ever more bland and robotic with each passing day since the early 90\u2019s. What do we honestly expect from soulless and faceless machines that covet money over all else? Honestly, I don\u2019t look at it as a problem that\u2019s merely contained to establishment country music or even mainstream music overall. It\u2019s a problem with consumers demanding less rather than more. I guarantee you that corporations as a whole would stop shoving worthless, nutrition-less products of all varieties. If everyday folks from all walks would recognize the inferior products and refuse to buy them in the first place. Music is no exception.<\/p>\n
6. How do you get up for a show after traveling so many miles between venues? Is it all just part of the process or are you a real road warrior?<\/p>\n
Haha, I guess I\u2019m a road warrior. I don\u2019t know though. I work hard and I love my job. To me, music is the only thing worth doing everyday and the early mornings, late nights and long drives are just another beautiful part of the thing I love. Truthfully, sometimes I wanna be asleep still but knowing that I\u2019m headed someplace new is enough reason to get out of bed and head on down the road again.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Rob Azevedo<\/strong><\/p>\n Rob Azevedo, from Manchester, has been hosting a weekly radio show called\u00a0\u201cGranite State of Mind\u201d<\/a>\u00a0for the past three and a half years which showcases musicians from around New Hampshire and beyond. \u00a0\u201cGranite State of Mind\u201d is an hour long program that features artists performing live in-studio\u00a0each week,\u00a0now exclusively on WKXL<\/strong>.\u00a0 Azevedo also writes a weekly music column called\u00a0\u201cSound Check\u201d for the Concord Monitor<\/a>\u00a0and hosts a monthly \u201cArtist in the Round\u201d style series at New England College in Concord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thanks to my most reliable musical gumshoe, 87 year old Demetra Angelides from Manchester, the Greek-born outlaw country aficionado, for tipping me off that Austin Lucas would be swinging through Nashua this Sunday night for a show at the Thirsty Turtle Tavern. That\u2019s a real good show to catch if you\u2019re into grit country, songs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,50,39],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blog","7":"category-granite-state-of-mind","8":"category-homepage"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9440,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9438\/revisions\/9440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}