![]() That was the first day I thought ‘wow, this is what my record’s going to sound like.’ It was a really cool feeling.” I had a day off and the place all to myself I spread out and had my headphones on and guitar out, and all in one day, all these lyrics came together to this collection of songs I’d been working on. ![]() “Then in the fall of last year, I was on a solo tour supporting Mark Eitzel of American Music Club and we were in Manchester, staying at this house that’s sort of a legendary rock crash pad that has a piano and a bunch of rooms for the bands that come through. Now, we’re sitting in producer/engineer Jim Keller’s Brooklyn studio, sun streaming in through big windows over the mixing desk, as Keller cues up the album-opening track, “Felix and Adelita.” Freshly mixed just the day before, it’s Nicolay’s musical reverie come to life, and the church organ, banjo, slide guitar and brushed drumming set a sentimental, if not dark, tone. “So it’s the story of the troubled relationship of Felix and Adelita writ large on this story of a country that’s ravaged by plague.” “I wrote a couple songs about these characters which are then mapped loosely against these other songs which are about a plague,” he describes. Nicolay is quick to point out that Luck & Courage is not a concept record, however. “I don’t know anyone by those names, so I Googled them and it turns out that in Latin and Spanish the names mean Luck & Courage,” Nicolay explains. What he had was the ill-fated love story of two characters named Felix and Adelita. The keyboard/accordion/banjo, etc.-playing former keysman for The Hold Steady woke up to more than a song.
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