Forgoing the alt-country and bluegrass tones of the Pessimistics for indie alt-folk, Clay’s newest effort puts an emphasis on organic instrumentation and heartfelt lyrics, exploring both personal and universal themes.
“I’ve poured a lot of myself into this record as did the extremely talented individuals who joined me in-studio,” Clay said. “It’s an expression of where I am in life, and it feels genuine to me. Each song represents a part of my story, and I hope it offers a shoulder for others.”
Produced by Clay and David Payne, and recorded at Harold Hensley’s Germantown home, the five-song EP puts listeners in the passenger seat of Clay’s experiences in recent years. The songs are more about his personal and internal struggles as maturity sets in, as opposed to his previous songs about living on the road and crashing on couches — the life of the independent musician.
The first track, “Coming of Age,” seems to serve as a memento for the child he and his wife had in 2020 against all odds, as also chronicled in the third track “Orion”: a candid account of the emotions he and his wife went through after suffering a miscarriage in 2019.
“It’s very subjective; it’s hard to know what it feels like unless you’ve been through it,” Clay said. “Things like that I guess are a little bit more of what’s on my mind to write about these days.”
Mid-2020, Clay self-produced the five songs on the EP as raw as the songs themselves: with vocals and a lone acoustic guitar. He’s glad he pumped the brakes and fleshed them out more in the studio. While he did sit on this batch of songs for a while, hoping to just get them off his chest, he says that inspiration has come back around — and that he’s back on the writing wagon.
“When it’s going to come and go, you just kind of have to be ready,” Clay said. “But you just never know.”
Personnel on Clay’s debut record include Khrys Blank, Rob Thaxton, Max Nunery, Payne, and Hensley.
There are no current plans to release “Nicholas Clay” physically, but he ideally would like to have it pressed to vinyl: one side being the studio tracks, the flip being live sessions of the same songs.
As a part of the Cincinnati music scene for nearly 20 years, Clay still plays two or three spots a week, though he says the luster of playing those shows — with scheduling and setting up, not to mention running a flower business with his wife, being a new dad — is not the same as it used to be.
“I’m 42; everything cool about any of this went long ago,” he said. “I do this because it’s just who I am. I don’t know what else to do.”
When his wife put on headphones and listened to the EP for the first time, she said that it sounded so good, and that she was so proud of him. Even if Clay did just want to get those songs out there, fate intervened in the end.
And now he has an EP that he’s super proud of, too.
Brandon Berry writes about the Dayton and Southwest Ohio music and art scene. Have a story idea for him? Email branberry100@gmail.com.
More info: Nicholas Clay’s debut EP “Nicholas Clay” is available on all streaming platforms.
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