Rural Roots That Run Deep With Nick Shoulders and Adeem the Artist

With lyrical wit and humor ranging from wry to dark, both Arkansan Nick Shoulders and native North Carolinian Adeem the Artist make music that champions their cultural identities

Welcome to another episode of Southern Songs and Stories, or at least the transcription of the podcast, including additional notes here. I hope you enjoy it and come away with something you didn’t know before!

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In the first of two episodes from MerleFest in April 2024, we highlight two artists making their debuts at the festival, Nick Shoulders and Adeem the Artist. Following this episode are two artists who have made MerleFest a regular stop over its history — 24 and 26 times, respectively — Jim Lauderdale and Donna the Buffalo.

Nick Shoulders is from Arkansas, while Adeem the Artist, who now lives in Tennessee, has lineage from North Carolina going back seven generations. As with so many roots music artists, the place where their roots are found is central to their art, and you will hear more about that from both in our conversations here, including excerpts of their latest music.

Here is the podcast script including the transcription of our interviews:

[“Hoarse Whisperer” by Nick Shoulders, from All Bad, continuing as bed]

Intro: 00:03:11 Nick Shoulders 

I typically like to just kind of throw the conversation piece or conversation starter if you will out there that we just call it Grandpa music because like you say, country music, that's a loaded term, a lot of people will say, oh, you're a bluegrass man, you're a rockabilly band. Not obviously listening to much rockabilly or bluegrass. That they they're ascribing to our style, but yeah, I I would like to think that though we definitely like deal in country music and very purposely call what we're doing traditional country music. It's obviously like rooted deeply but reacting to the times and very much like a part of the like the Podunk zeitgeist. So I'd like to think that we are. We are country music, but welcome to any and all interpretations of what that actually means.

00:00:59 Adeem the Artist 

Yeah. Well, I love this. Yeah. Well, I think I'm I consider myself Carolina country. There's Carolina country has some specificities to it that I think are have a a greater kinship with like red dirt in Texas than they do with the Nashville, TN kind of sound anyway, yeah. I don't let Tennessee hear me say this, but Carolina kid. 

That was Adeem the Artist, following Nick Shoulders, who spoke with when both made their debuts at MerleFest in 2024. First time performers at festivals are often the artists that put those lineups over the top for me, and I was excited to see them play and get to talk with them about their music as well as their impressions of the festival, which has been going since 1988. 

Nick Shoulders is from Arkansas, while Adeem the Artist, as you heard him say, has roots in North Carolina, and those go seven generations deep. As with so many roots music artists, the place where their roots are found is central to their art, and you will hear more about that from both in our conversations here. And you will hear some of the latest music from both as well, which starts off with the song playing now, “Hoarse Whisperer”-- as in a hoarse voice, not the animal -- by Nick Shoulders, from his latest album All Bad. 

I am Joe Kendrick, welcoming you to Southern Songs and Stories, with our episode on Nick Shoulders and Adeem the Artist.

[SSaS intro theme with voiceover by Corrie Askew]

While no one would confuse the two, both Adeem the Artist and Nick Shoulders have a good bit in common, from the experience of moving far away from the South and then returning, to the way that they also, eventually, embraced the kinds of roots music they knew well growing up. Both have a knack for lyrical wit and show a sense of humor ranging from wry to dark, and both make music that is hyper aware of their cultural identity as poor and marginalized, often pointing out class and social inequities as they sing their own truths to privilege and power. One example of the latter is this song, “Plot Of Land” by Adeem the Artist, from their 2024 album Anniversary. 

[“Plot of Land” by Adeem the Artist, from Anniversary, excerpt]

Country music has often been at its best when it goes beyond celebration to an actual embodiment of perspectives of the working class. It often returns to well established themes of the outsider who becomes a hero as well. In the case of Nick Shoulders and Adeem the Artist, we find two artists who came from modest means in the rural South and came to champion those people and places; we find both picking up the mantle of the outsider not as pretense but, as far as the Nashville hit making machine goes at least, real outsiders.  

[“Appreciate’cha” by Nick Shoulders, from All Bad, excerpt]

Nick Shoulders, with a bit of “Appreciate’cha” from his 2023 album All Bad, which could be the closest thing to a Woody Guthrie song in that collection. One of the singles from that record, “Don’t Fence Me In”, updates the premise of the song that Cole Porter wrote and Gene Autry made famous in 1944 by switching the theme of desire for wide open spaces and physical freedom to a cry for freedom from, as he is quoted recently in the quarterly journal No Depression, saying “exploitation of specifically rural Southern pain, but rural pain in general, of disenfranchisement, of taking advantage of that inequality that’s baked into it, and convincing people to keep getting that chain tighter, to keep lengthening that noose so that somebody can keep control over their lives”.

I began our conversation by asking about what Merlefest meant to him. Here is Nick Shoulders:

00:00:27 Nick Shoulders 

so I am a long time lover of bluegrass and old time music. I started on old time banjo as a teenager and I've known of Merle Fest for a lot of my time. Doing traditional music just because you start like paying attention to bands and where they're playing and it's like, oh, this pops up consistently. So I know it's a it's a festival of of repute, but I've never gotten to attend or play, so it's. Yeah, pretty cool. For me, this has kind of just been a theme of music work in the last couple of years that I get to do stuff that I used to just kind of dream about attending. So it's it's always neat for me. 

00:01:03 Joe Kendrick 

Yeah, it's great to see you get to this sort of platform as it were. It's a pretty big exposure at MerleFest. So tip of the hat for you there,

00:01:12 Nick Shoulders 

Thanks. 

 Doc Watson, the namesake or Merle Watson, the namesake and Doc just so famous, but especially around here and I wonder about where your home state, Arkansas, if you've got an equivalent. Of like if you had this festival in in your home state is, is there anybody that comes to mind? 

00:01:37 Nick Shoulders 

Boy, I mean, I think it'd have to be Jimmy Driftwood and like the Ozark folks, Interstate Park and stuff like that. But we really just by nature of of like less population which equals less rich musical tradition, we don't have like. You know, I I know that Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Charlie Poole, my whole Mount Airy area fiddler tradition that I'm so latched on to like y'all just have this concentration of players that, like, went on to define the genre that we don't quite have in our. It's like most people that defined the genre, they were part of had to leave to, you know, make a living. Johnny Cash or Sister Rosetta Tharp or something like that. So I think the equivalent have to be. If there was a Jimmy Driftwood festival in the Ozarks, but there really isn't anything of that. Like kind of caliber and I I don't know. Like I said, I I am so in awe of the concentration of players that come out of the the Carolina tradition and I've kind of always been an adherent to to a lot of those playing styles. So it's it's really just neat to be on the ground where all that happened, you know. 

00:02:35 Joe Kendrick 

Well, no shortage of young and upcoming generations with talented players from your corner of the world and reading a recent interview where you talked about essentially taking up the mantle of your own lineage in a way. And I thought that was a really interesting take on how you came to your style of music. How would you describe your music? Would you be able to say it's any one style or another? 

00:03:11 Nick Shoulders 

I typically like to just kind of throw the conversation piece or conversation starter if you will out there that we just call it Grandpa music because like you say, country music, that's a loaded term, a lot of people will say, oh, you're a bluegrass man, you're a rockabilly band. Not obviously listening to much rockabilly or bluegrass. That they they're ascribing to our style, but yeah, I I would like to think that though we definitely like deal in country music and very purposely call what we're doing traditional country music. It's obviously like rooted deeply but reacting to the times and very much like a part of the like the Podunk zeitgeist. So I'd like to think that we are. We are country music, but welcome to any and all interpretations of what that actually means. 

00:03:55 Joe Kendrick 

Definitely you've got that roots based. And everything. 

00:04:00 

Mm-hmm. 

00:04:02 Joe Kendrick 

But there does seem to be, maybe at least a, you know, a hint of it in the background somewhere of some real rock'n'roll sensibility. Maybe with songwriting, attitude. Where does that come in? 

00:04:16 Nick Shoulders 

Well, I was kind of overexposed to the roots of country music growing up like you mentioned. My family did like old timey southern singing and gospel singing and stuff, and I kind of wanted. To scare people. So as a teenager I started getting into punk and metal music and becoming, like, really entrenched in that subculture and just playing in heavy bands definitely was kind of like the formative period of my like learning how to wind an instrument cable learning how to like tune your drums and like how to run a touring band. 

And then when I came out of heavy music and I was like, OK, I'm, I'm. I'm tired of kind of having an answer to people who may not necessarily, like, have any respect or root in the genre. Like, I would like to to put my two cents in. We had that already, like heavy music background to draw on. So it's Have like. Yeah, blue collar, working class music values with the punk and metal that have a brilliant and really compatible crossover with country and traditional form. So it really wasn't that weird to transition to to take that out. 

00:05:18 Joe Kendrick 

Yeah. You got a number of contemporaries here. Even Willi Carlisle is here for Merlefest. 

Just wonder if you could point to any of your folks, especially from around Arkansas and General region, that that you think we ought to get turned. 

00:05:36 Nick Shoulders 

Yeah. You know, there's a lot of performers who came to Arkansas from outside of the state. Willi it be one that, like, are doing their best to embody the tradition that we came up in and? 

Yeah, I'm a big fan of the folks that we tried to put in front of people via my record label that I Co around with my buddy Kurt Garr Hole Records. But yeah, our buddy Jude Brothers is an amazing singer and very much from Arkansas and very much steeped in like the same kind of. 

Like. Tradition and like paying attention to the roots of the singing style, from like an academic and functional standpoint. So I would say if anybody is interested, just go start diving in on our whole records because we're definitely trying to support our our regional, our little little pocket of folks there, you know. 

00:06:29 Joe Kendrick 

Tell us a little bit about running the label, is that what you expected, is that just for your own purposes? Or did you have something bigger in mind when you set it up? 

00:06:40 Nick Shoulders 

So during the pandemic, we were sort of inundated with like an attention and ascendance into like music, notoriety that was totally unprecedented in my life. Nothing that I knew how to handle or knew anything about it. We didn't really have any material return on it because I was, you know, like everybody else, just locked down and. 

00:06:58 Nick Shoulders 

I didn't really know any better and didn't want to give a partial ownership of my masters to somebody I didn't know. So we basically started that label as a. Like a way to sort of spread what was coming to us unexpectedly in terms of attention and notoriety and success and just prop up our buddies who we think deserve it just as much who are from the same, like retired punks playing traditional music, sort of strata. And yeah, I I don't. I couldn't claim to actually run the label. I think, Kurt. 

As much more of that I'm. I'm sort of the breadwinning name, I guess, but it is definitely more work, more complicated, and we're up against far, much more of an entrenched system than I could have ever anticipated, even like kind of knowing full well what we're getting into and at least in like the most basic. 

But I'd say on another hand, it's incredibly rewarding because again, we get to sort of curate and propagate this world of music that we believe in that is like our contemporary as our friends, people we think, deserve to get heard. And that's been important for us. So I think that that it does kick our ass on a regular basis. It's very much with it. 

00:08:06 Joe Kendrick 

Any comment on the viability of physical formats? 

00:08:13 Nick Shoulders 

Um, I am from a real nerdy world. I'm from like the world of 45 collectors and you know mixed cassette tapes and stuff like that. The people that are really like still clinging to analog media and trying to like be sort of archivists and and collectors of stuff that like. 

Those people just don't care about and as such I will stubbornly, always try to to like, lean into the physical media and lean into the idea that this stuff is worth still making, even if you can just go stream this. And I think as also a visual artist who I draw the album artwork and all the merchandise and stuff associated with the band and just knowing what a tradition and, like, storied, rich sort of outlet, that visual art has always had in making like LP covers and album art in general. 

It's something that I think like is a integrated art form between visual and musical art that like, I'm not letting go of and. I figure if they ever pay us well for streaming, maybe things will go differently, but until that day that will never come. I'll still be collecting 40 fives and drawing album covers. 

00:09:26 Joe Kendrick 

Yeah. Can we touch on that aesthetic briefly, if you will, about how there is that you know the look of the Nick Shoulders album tells you a lot about the sound of it. Tell us about where that where, where that comes from, if you? 

00:09:37 Nick Shoulders 

Mm-hmm. 

00:09:43 Nick Shoulders 

Yeah, since I was, you know, before I can remember, I guess I've been whistling and warbling and interpreting the spaces around me via visual art. And I look at the palette of colors I use. I look at the line quality and I can see Ozark Springs. I can see. I can see the moss, the limestone, the like manic lines of of the, of the Bluffs and I think that they are integrally tied. My singing is a product of the landscape and my interpretation of of line and color and form are just as much products of that landscape. So I'd say like it's country music because it's from somewhere and the art aligns with it because it is also equally informed by such. But like again, we might be like deeply rooted, but we're still reacting to the times we live in. So like you can't escape that. It looks a little bit like a Ren and Stimpy cartoon or that it's got like some associations with like, you know, things that people are familiar with seeing now. But I would like to think that. Yeah, in its own way. It's it's timeless and and tied to things that are deeper than you know, just your average zany sort of look to an album, art.     

[“Arkansas Troubler” by Nick Shoulders, from All Bad, continuing as bed]

Wrapping up our conversation with Nick Shoulders with this instrumental from this album All Bad, “Arkansas Troubler”. You have probably heard of the song “Arkansas Traveler”, which has been recorded by practically everyone since it was first put on record by its originator, fellow Arkansan Alexander Campbell “Eck” Robertson back in 1922. Nick loves to play around with these country touchstones, so now we get “Arkansas Troubler”. Another song title pun on All Bad takes “Mama Tried” and simply switches two letters around: “Mama Tired”. 

Coming up, another artist making their Merlefest debut, with our conversation with Adeem the Artist.

[“Rotations” by Adeem the Artist, from Anniversary, excerpt]

Some of Adeem the Artist’s song “Rotations” from their third album, Anniversary, which features album art by Adeem’s partner Hannah, showing the date of their 10th anniversary which also was the album’s release date, May 3rd. Anniversary was produced by Butch Walker, who is well known in rock and roll circles for his 80s and 90s bands SouthGang and Marvelous 3, and has produced artists like Frank Turner, Taylor Swift, and now, Adeem the Artist 

As I mentioned at the top of the show, this was Adeem’s first Merlefest, and it turned out that I was the first person they met at the festival when we sat down for our conversation. I did not know it at the time, but Adeem’s North Carolina roots were way closer to my own than I could have guessed. In all my years of doing this podcast and many more doing radio and even more just enjoying music in general, I have never met a musician who came from the place I grew up. Adeem grew up in rural Stanly County, North Carolina, in a town called Locust. Two miles away and a couple of decades earlier, I grew up in a town called Stanfield. Which still does not have a stoplight. As far as small world moments go, that felt like a big one!  

Now, the song we featured just now, “Rotations”, is an homage to Adeem’s child, now six years old, whom Adeem mentions in our conversation, which begins here with me asking how things are going currently. Here is Adeem the Artist:

00:01:49 Adeem the Artist 

Oh, not not a whole lot. I got an album coming out and so I've been. I've been working on getting the orders together and got my friend Steph helping me package records and get those out the door got handy working overtime on on art design for the release shows and the burdening shouldering a lot of the burden from. We have a six year old who is just like always ready to go. So if things are things are hectic but good, it's been really it's been a really busy and frenetic time, but also really rewarding. 

00:02:28 Joe Kendrick 

Good. What are you planning on doing today at Merlefest? What's your set going to be like? 

00:02:38 Adeem the Artist 

I'm probably gonna rock'n'roll. We'll do a little bit of rock'n'roll music. No, I I I am. I was going through it like. Man, there's a lot of content in my music that might not work you you know. Things I've learned in the past. To avoid that, you know. But yeah, no, I I think I'm really excited about the mixture of new songs that I'm throwing in and kind of getting to share for the first time here actually at Merle Fest is is kind of the first time they've played on stage so. 

00:03:15 Joe Kendrick 

That's great. And your knowledge of Doc and Merle Watson is, is are they revered in, in your mind or is there music? Does it, where does it fit with you? 

00:03:25 Adeem the Artist 

Yeah. I mean it's it's it's hard to qualify the influence of Doc Watson on on all of us sort of pickers. But uh. Yeah, he's, he's. I I don't know that he's like my. I don't know all that much about him, but yeah, grew up listening to him on records. 

00:03:46 Joe Kendrick 

Yeah, I imagine it's, it's hard not to know about who Doc Watson is as a performing artist, at least on some level at least having been introduced to him. So yeah, this festival. In memory of Merle Watson when he was tragically killed and then it just became this Merle Fest that you see today, which is kind of an amazing story. 

 That's beautiful, yeah. 

00:04:13 Joe Kendrick 

And just how festivals have become a real, the way to go in so many ways for live music experience. 

00:04:23 Adeem the Artist 

I agree, I agree.

00:04:25 Joe Kendrick 

Like, sure, people still have plenty of club dates, plenty of venue shows, but festivals seem like they've kind of taken over the world and this was one of the grand daddies. 

00:04:35 Adeem the Artist 

Yeah. You guys been at it for a for a little while here. 

00:04:38 Joe Kendrick 

Yeah, so 36 years, I think now that's fascinating. Yeah. 

00:04:43 Adeem the Artist 

It's it's. It's a testament to the love that's put into the thing, right? I mean, that's a that's true of anything that I think thrives. It's there. There's a lot of labor that's poured into it, and I think I mean, one thing I've noticed because I feel the same. I've done like a few festivals in the past couple of years that just. It's. Really took my breath away. Not because like. I got to play in the glamorous theater. Or you know what I mean? Because I got, like, a real warm community experience of just spending time with people out in the woods. Or you know what I mean? Or taking over a city and just watching the the landscape change socially for a week or a weekend. And yeah, I I. You know there's. A lot of variations of the of of of this in the Southeast, but I I especially love the small like community driven efforts that are like really committed to creating a. Yeah, community experience. 

00:05:49 Joe Kendrick 

Yeah, with this festival in particular, you know you've got that root of acoustic, bluegrass, old time, kind of music other than Doc Watson. Is there anybody in that world that you especially gravitate to? 

00:06:03 Adeem the Artist 

I mean, Jake Blount was like a window into that world for me. I love Jake Blount. And. I mean, I I listen to a lot of Piedmont Blues stuff which can fall under that umbrella too. A lot of like Blind Boy Fuller is huge for me and Browny, McGee and. Yeah, I think. As far as old time, I just, I just don't have I I need to. I need to. I need to really, like, get in. You know, I'm like a I'm a. I feel scared of the go to old time gym sometimes. You know what I mean? Sometimes I have nail Polish on and stuff like it's how I present daily? 

00:06:51 Joe Kendrick 

I don't know. I think the culture is shifting, especially with younger generations to where that is completely the norm. Full sleeves, nose rings, it's just, it's just, doesn't it? It's not something that is a big shock anymore. I mean, like, some some sectors, I'm sure you've got the the old school. 

00:06:59 Adeem the Artist 

Yeah. 

00:07:12 Joe Kendrick 

Then in the same way, they're not going to do it any different. You know, you. But as far as the jams go now, I don't know personally, because I don't play. I took piano, but I don't play guitar or anything. So I don't sit around these campfire jams. 

00:07:26 Adeem the Artist 

Right. 

00:07:27 Joe Kendrick 

That would be a really great thing to do. While you're at Merle Fest, though, by the way, is just to find the late night jam somewhere and join in. 

00:07:30 Adeem the Artist 

Yeah, I would love. Do it. Yeah. 

I love. I didn't. I didn't have the passion for for guitar, you know, I started playing because I was a poet and guitar was just kind of like a vehicle for that. And I think when I started, I got some gigs with American Aquarium. It's like the first kind of to me, big tour, you know, like, Oh my gosh, these are club dates. And I just was like, I got. To get sharp. You know, like I gotta dust up my guitar. And then I became, like, really fascinated with. You know, discovering language for how to play. And you know I'm self-taught. So this was like kind of my first foray into that, but. 

00:08:06 Joe Kendrick 

OK. Imagine if you can be accepted by the American Aquarium audience, then that says a lot. If you can make it not be booed off stage. 

00:08:15 Adeem the Artist 

Yeah. Well, I don't know that. The whole sector, but. But there's yeah, they got a minority of people that like me still, I think. 

00:08:26 Joe Kendrick 

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So what else are you listening to? What else is going into the the new record that we might not be familiar with? 

00:08:35 Adeem the Artist 

Yet yeah, the new record stuff, I mean, there was a lot of Blind Boy Fuller that I was listening to and Brownie McGee. And also just like a random mixes of Gastonia bands like you Know. Was really reflecting a lot on like kind of the ancestral power of a place that you come from? 

That kind of stuff. So. But then also I got to work with Butch Walker, who's like, you know, I grew up listening to his records. And so there was this part of me that got to really kind of just try to shill, you know, shell out some, some anthemic, you know, pop rock songs. 

Like if you get the. Chance. Why not, you know? And it, yeah, that. That was a lot of. But I probably listen to a lot of his records in preparation of that too. 

00:09:30 Joe Kendrick 

Very good. That's that's got to be a a great bucket list kind of feeling to work with somebody that you've admired for that long. 

00:09:38 Adeem the Artist 

Oh, it's incredible. It's incredible. And he's such a good and gentle person. I mean, getting to know him and and and calling my friend. It's been a real it's been a real gift due to sort of the chaos of everything. 

00:09:51 Joe Kendrick 

Yeah, Speaking of the chaos, I mean, you've emerged from the the COVID years intact, so that, that's another check. 

00:10:01 Adeem the Artist 

I did. I survived. 

00:10:04 Joe Kendrick 

But I mean interesting, because you're still kind of at the beginning of your career in a lot of ways and having that as one of the first hurdles. It has got to be -- it wasn't easy for anybody, but I imagine it had its special challenges for you. 

00:10:18 Adeem the Artist 

Yeah. I don't know. I think I think it had the opposite. I think it's when like you know you. Take the medicine that that's right. And all of a. Sudden you're functional like I think for me I just had. 

There were so many things that I learned on like a myopic level. Just being in small community that when COVID happened kind of got like blown up, you know, and my my vision for for how everything operated was dismantled so much. And when all those rules. Didn't matter anymore. And when all these structures were kind of like called into question whether or not they were even going to survive, leveled the playing field in a way. And I think I think for me, there was a a bit of it that felt very like. Oh. You know, I mean, time to get creative and weird, you know? And so I think that it. 

00:11:10 Joe Kendrick 

Mm-hmm. 

00:11:15 Adeem the Artist 

That that. Yeah. I, I think I think that the pandemic ends as as. Sort of dark as it is to imply, you know, I think I think that it happened to the benefit of my, my songwriting place I was at. 

00:11:33 Joe Kendrick 

Yeah, I can. I can see that taking that turn, which is good, you can make some lemonade out of the lemons. 

00:11:40 Adeem the Artist 

Yeah. Yeah. I try to let the ghosts of the people who passed away from COVID-19 haunt all my songs. Like little houses. I think Nick Cave said that. 

[“There We Are” by Adeem the Artist, from Anniversary, continuing as bed]

Speaking of Nick Cave, there are some strong Nick Cave vibes on this song, “There We Are”, which begins Adeem the Artist’s album Anniversary, and which brings us to the close of this episode. Thank you so much for listening! We are grateful you are here, and for spreading awareness of what we are doing. It is as easy as telling a friend and following this podcast on your platform of choice. From there it takes just a moment to give us a top rating, and on the apps that make a place for it, a review! It makes a great difference because the more top reviews and ratings we get, the more visible we become to everyone on those platforms, which means that more people just like you will connect with artists we feature on the podcast.. 

This series is a part of the lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available at https://www.osirispod.com/. You can also hear new episodes on Bluegrass Planet Radio at https://www.bluegrassplanetradio.com/

. Thanks to Corrie Askew for producing the radio adaptations of this series on public radio WNCW, where we worked with Joshua Meng who wrote and performed our theme songs.  I am your host and producer Joe Kendrick, and this is Southern Songs and Stories: the music of the South and the artists who make it.