Nick Shoulders

Wielding an ethereal croon and masterful whistle crafted from a lifetime chasing lizards through the Ozark hills, Nick Shoulders is a sixth-generation Arkansan from Roland, Arkansas, and a proudly Pan-Arkansan artist whose music reflects the breadth and complexity of the state he calls home. A living link to the roots of country music with a penchant for the absurd, he combines his family’s deep ties to regional traditional singing with years of playing to crowded street corners to forge a hybridized form of raucously clever country music: born of forgotten rocky hollers and bred to confront the tensions of the 21st-century South.

As evidenced by his surreal album art and anachronistic songwriting, Nick’s creative output is steeped in the complicated history of rural Arkansas, while serving as a conscious rebuke of country music’s blind allegiance to historical seats of power and repression. Though often associated with the Ozarks, Shoulders’ work embraces a broader Arkansas identity, drawing connections across landscapes, communities, and traditions that transcend regional boundaries.

With a kind word and a mean yodel, Nick hopes to put the “Try” in country.