Country singer-songwriter Nick Shoulders is a voice that we've heard on the show before, talking about both his music and his affiliation with Fayetteville-founded Gar Hole Records, an independent record label now based in New Orleans. Shoulders came to the Carver Center for Public Radio back in December to record a KUAF live session featuring songs from his most recent album, “Refugia Blues”. He spoke with Ozarks at Large's Sophia Nourani about the meanings and motives behind the new music.
Nick Shoulders: Refugia is like an ecological term that basically dictates, like, during eras of instability, extinction events, stuff like that, that there are inevitably going to be pockets where the chaos and the turmoil don't reach as acutely, and plant and animal species can hold on through tumult. So I kind of was taking the idea of that ecological term and how it relates to how human culture is going to react to coming instability, coming chaos, coming collapse — and that there's got to be some joy and love in there, too. You know, it can't all just be building bunkers and whatnot. So it's not like an apocalyptic record by any means, but it does take a quieter, more sheltered approach, which I think is a reflection of the times and just where I was when I was writing those songs.
Nourani: Yeah well, tell us a little bit about that — where you were when that process of writing the album began.
Shoulders: When my last record came out, that was full band — “All Bad” — that would have been fall of 2023. And the pace of tour and the amount of shows that we were playing around that record release — and I think it's worth noting for everyone who's maybe not super familiar with my story that I was playing for tips in the corners of moldy honky-tonks in Arkansas and Louisiana. And then COVID happened and I had a song go viral, and essentially my life and my music career changed overnight, like hockey stick style, without any gradient. And so the amount of tours that we were doing and how much — that like three years between 2020 and 2023, my life changed — I can't overstate how gnarly it was, and it basically wrecked my life and it wrecked my relationships with people. It wrecked my body. And I kind of just had a full-on collapse in fall of 2023 around how intense that record release cycle was.
And that winter, I was just kind of holed up trying to recover, trying to get back on my feet. And I had a few songs that I'd been kicking around, and a few just really came out really quickly during that period of unrest. And I went in the studio thinking I was going to cut some demos for a future full-band record. And I was like, "Cool, I got these bummer bangers. We'll just do it all acoustic guitar and banjo. May not ever see the light of day, but maybe these will become full-band songs one day." And hearing them back, I was like, "You know what? This is sparse and kind of haunting at moments. I haven't released anything quite like this. Maybe this should just be my acoustic solo record." And that would have been January 2024, which I remember very well because at the time I got health insurance for the first time since I was in my early 20s.
Nourani: Congratulations.
Shoulders: Yeah, thanks. It's great. It's great here. But yeah, I'm fully aware that people who are used to the raucous full-band sound are probably going to find this album to be, again, kind of sparse and quiet comparatively. But we contain multitudes, as they say.
Nourani: Oh yes. So how has it been performing some of this music live? How has the reaction been?
Shoulders: We just got off of a month-long tour — started in Mississippi and went all the way up to Maine and back through Canada and down. And yeah, I'm really shocked that people are as excited about this material as they are, because frankly I'm like, "Oh, this is all just kind of sad and dismal." And —
Nourani: I think it resonates.
Shoulders: Well. Yeah. There's a mood, you know. But yeah, people are very excited to hear it. And I've had some very specific requests for songs that I wasn't expecting people to want to hear. But it's been really neat, especially in the Southern shows. Before we got north of Virginia on that route, hearing how people were reacting to songs like "Dixie Be Damned" or "Hillfolk" — these tunes that are really culturally and geographically rooted in a way that I think sort of is almost subversive to the like problematic sides of what country music represents. Because, I mean, if country music is just rural, why does everyone fake a Southern accent? It's very obvious that the cultural and geographic origins of this music are in Southernness — of the hybrid culture of West African, Anglo-Celtic, and indigenous hybridization that happens in the South. And that's like what makes this cool. So to hear people flip out and get really excited about these songs that are based on such a specific regional experience was really inspiring and kind of felt, in the words of a certain Texan, like "mission accomplished."
Nourani: Yes. Well, and kind of leading into my next question — our holidays, and it kind of ties into Gar Hole Records moving to New Orleans. Can you comment a little bit about that regional-specific niche and how it translates into different parts of the country, and also what it was like to play the last Gar-Holeidays show in Fayetteville?
Shoulders: It was bittersweet. It was really great to see how many people came out. I'm continuously shocked — during that show I have a tradition of asking the audience how many of them drove more than an hour, traveled more than an hour to come to the show. And I swear it was at least a third, maybe half of the room raised their hand when I said that. And I'm just so humbled that people are so enthused about the thing that we're doing here that they travel to come and see it. So that part was really, really neat. Again, bittersweet — that was potentially the last in town. But you know, Gar Hole moving — I would like to think that the ethical and cultural center of Gar Hole has always existed without a physical place. You know, it can be in Little Rock or Fayetteville or New Orleans, any of the places that kind of generally represent the lifestyle and the experience that we're hoping to faithfully propagate via the record label.
But I don't think a lot's going to change. I think being down in New Orleans means it's easier for a co-owner of Gar Hole, Kurt DeLashmet, to own and operate and have his warehouse and his ability to logistically solve problems. But up here, it's always been a struggle to find space to allow things like that to happen. DIY is really threatened in northwest Arkansas. Our old headquarters just down the street is now underneath a construction site.
Nourani: Right.
Shoulders: So, not to say that northwest Arkansas ran us out or anything like that, but it's increasingly difficult to do anything that's not, you know, sanctioned by the powers that be in this area. And I just want to remind people to keep fighting and keep trying to throw cool stuff. And just the fact that Gar Hole is moving doesn't mean that the spirit of the thing isn't still here 100%.
Nourani: One hundred percent. Maybe reflecting on this past year and looking into the year ahead — what are you looking forward to, what are you most excited for?
Shoulders: Wow. Yeah, what a question. This last year was a lot of changes. Had some long-time band members part ways. Had some new folks come in to start working with me, and just generally, like, touring like there's not long left — putting a ton of energy into that. And I wouldn't say there's a finish line or anything like that, but I'm excited to have a little time off this year. I worked really hard this last year so that I could have some meaningful downtime. And I'd like to work harder at growing food, growing community. Identify some new plants. See some hollows I haven't seen before, really just have some quiet and some space to explore and get to love this place that I have lived my entire life in a new way. So I would say I'm excited to have downtime in 2026 to fall in love with the Ozarks all over again.
I will say from a musical standpoint, maybe that's not super congruent with career goals, but in terms of what feeds the soul, what maybe will become a future song, what keeps me sane — I've got a big year coming.
Nourani: That's what matters most. Thank you, Nick.
Shoulders: Yep. Thank you, Sophie.
Nourani: That was Fayetteville-based country singer-songwriter Nick Shoulders talking with me about his most recent album, “Refugia Blues”, which is available wherever you stream or download music. That interview was recorded as part of our KUAF live session series.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
