The Big Nick Story

 

What prompts one to leave the predicable confines of home and career to undertake the perils of forming a band?  What unseen force keeps one out in the wee hours of the morning, performing in choking, smoke-filled bar rooms?  What genetic instinct forces one to ravage vehicle after vehicle while investing their life savings into musical equipment?

 

I don’t know .. I don’t have that answer! (Not a clue) But what I can tell you is how Big Nick and the Cydecos came to be.

 

It started simply, unassumingly enough .. decades back when “Big Nick” was still a schoolboy in the Midwest.

 

Also living in proximity was a family of friends of Polish decent.  Three generations had lived together, including a Polish-speaking grandfather who brought with him from Poland an accent, and a couple of accordions.

 

One of the accordions was small, red and tired looking.  It smelled strongly of old-papery leather, wood, and glue; its bellows held together by an infinity of haphazard applications of furniture upholstery tape.

 

Still .. something magical happened when those wheezing old bellows were squeezed together and a few yellowed keys pressed.  A marvelous deep resonating tone emitted that would fill the room. 

 

Where did that sound come from?  How could this tired looking box do that?! 

 

I guess the bug had bitten.  But it wasn’t for several decades later before “Big Nick” returned to the inescapable magic of that old “box”.

 

After abandoning several stints in local rock bands as a guitar player, Big Nick found himself enjoying the music of Summerfest in Milwaukee Wisconsin one evening.  And it was there where he once again met face to face that unassuming (stigmatic) instrument, now in the hands of world-renowned Zydeco artist, Stanley Dural, AKA Buckwheat Zydeco.

 

In the bright stage lights in a festival tent in an August summer night, “Nick” instantly recognized that here was a form of music free from the mundane shackles of ego and pretense .. Something that everyone could relate to.. A fun music spawned of a simpler time and place .. Fresh and almost innocent in content.

 

Soon after, Big Nick and better half Liz, discovered a used accordion at a local Thrift Shop.

 

“Oh! .. You should get it!” Volunteered Liz, totally unaware of the chain reaction, which was to soon follow.

 

And so it was, Big Nick, armed with his newly discovered treasure, began the quest for other musicians to form his own Zydeco band.

 

Our first CD, "Honey Bee" represents the efforts of several fine musicians from the Midwest, turned Zydeco.

 

It started as a demo project and became our first Big Nick CD.

Hope you enjoy listening as much as we have discovering!