Courtesy Samer Ghani
Audio By Carbonatix
Bluesman Carl “Buffalo” Nichols doesn’t see himself as a guitar-strumming savior, even if he’s been described as such since gaining national notoriety with a refreshing interpretation of old-school blues on his 2021 self-titled debut.
With songs such as “Another Man” and “Living Hell,” Nichols established himself as a man of his people, bluntly chronicling what it means to be Black in modern America.
“21st century don’t mean a thing to me ’cause it might as well be 1910, killing women, killing men,” he sings on “Another Man,” which also has a line that recalls how the police once pulled a gun on a seventeen-year-old Nichols.
“I could have been that man,” he croons. “Don’t need to hide behind a white hood when a badge works just as good. Another man is dead.”
It’s heavy, sobering stuff, to say the least. But Nichols, like many who came before him, is simply speaking his truth.
“The blues to me is always going to be Black music. It’s the pulse of Black people. Whatever it looks like is something else. It’s not really my concern,” he shares. “To me, one of our great contributions to the world of culture is the blues. And I feel like I should be able to say that this is what it means to be Black in America. That’s the blues.”
Still, the Houston-born, Milwaukee-based DIY musician isn’t worried about “reclaiming” a genre, an undertaking that Rolling Stone recently pinned on him. Blues was founded and pioneered by Black players after a little-known guitarist named Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil in the Mississippi Delta nearly a century ago.
“That’s something that’s kind of been tagged on me as a story for the press. It’s not really that important to me, especially using words like ‘reclaiming,'” he explains.
“The question that I always ask is, ‘Reclaiming it for whom?’ I don’t understand when people talk about reclaiming the blues – like, I can reclaim it for myself. And I’ve already done that. I can’t shift the pattern of culture or anything.”
Nichols has been forging his own path since initially releasing his first round of original tunes in 2009, even though he wasn’t immediately recognized. “I just didn’t know really what to do with [my music], because I was nineteen years old,” he admits. “There wasn’t really anywhere for me to go.”
Since then, Nichols has become uninterested in and disheartened by what he’s learned about the music industry. “It comes down to just the usual stuff that you see in the music industry. People don’t really see the blues. There are younger Black people who are not really considered, both as a market for consumers or as artists,” he explains. “People don’t really like when I say that, but it’s true. If you go to these labels, they don’t care to reach Black people in any way. That was really my point, and that still stands.
“I don’t think about that too much,” he adds. “I’m just trying to make interesting music, and I just happen to work within the blues genre.”
Armed with an acoustic guitar and an ear for mixing more contemporary influences with tried-and-true blues, Nichols has certainly accomplished his goal of creating a sound that’s undoubtedly his own. On his self-produced upcoming sophomore album, The Fatalist (out September 15 via Fat Possum Records), listeners are treated to a cover of Blind Willie Johnson‘s original “You’re Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond” that’s filled with 808s and samples. Such elements, which include washes of synth, are found throughout the record, and were a result of improvisation more than anything, Nichols says.
“Drum machines are a fifty-year-old technology. If the blues hadn’t been hijacked and trapped in amber, I think they naturally would’ve been incorporated,” he adds. “When you pick up a guitar, the first thing you’re gonna play is the blues. And when you pick up an 808, you’re gonna start doing trap beats.”
But playing live is really where Nichols expresses himself best, sharing both his well-known acoustic songs and “heavier stuff and distorted guitars,” he explains.
“Really, everything that’s me as a musician goes into the live show,” says Nichols, who is playing a free concert at Levitt Pavilion on Thursday, September 14. Local opener the Hardly Nevers are also on the bill.
Audiences will find that Nichols’s concerts are anything but traditional, despite all the talk about him being a blues throwback and revivalist. “I always feel like a song isn’t done until I’ve played it live for a few years,” Nichols explains. “Even when I record, I’m thinking about how it’s going to evolve. It just keeps changing.
“I try to make my show unpredictable, in ways. I play a lot of songs that I’ve never recorded,” he continues. “Sometimes I get to a point where a song feels right, and I’ll keep it there for a while. But for the most part, it’s changing from week to week.”
Buffalo Nichols, 6 p.m. Thursday, September 14, Levitt Pavilion, 1380 West Florida Avenue, free-$35 (VIP).
