Processing Grief Through Music
With Nick, circa 2016, at a show at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley
Other than it essentially being an unpaid labor of love (literally unpaid for me, at this point), music writing is the best job in the world.
I get to interview artists who I’ve long admired. I’m able to ask them questions that have been brimming in my brain for years. And then I get to synthesize those thoughts in a way that ideally convinces readers of the power and profundity of the artform.
And another unspoken rule about being a music writer is the free tickets. It’s generally understood that if you write a feature on a band (one that alerts readers of an upcoming performance), their publicist will provide you with a couple of comped passes to the gig.
Yeah, it smells a little of quid-pro-quo, but it’s not like I’m writing for the Washington Post and shadily covering up some abusive corruption. I get to write glowing articles about musicians I love, and as a way of showing their appreciation, they toss me a couple of tickets, gratis.
For years, that extra free ticket of mine was a hot commodity among my friend group. Before everyone got a little long in the tooth and started having kids, seeing a free performance of some band we all loved was a top rate experience. From about 2013 to 2019, I had to judiciously choose among a wide roster of candidates about who to ask to join me for a show.
One of my first choices was always my pal Nick. I met Nick in 2009 through my other friend Jeff, and we immediately hit it off. We enjoyed hanging out and having fun with our friends, and we had the same rascally sense of humor (rascally meaning we were unafraid to pummel a joke into the ground, and said “joke” was often only funny to an audience of two—me and him.)
We also shared a deep and abiding appreciation for music. The roster of bands we both adored was endless (Pavement, the Walkmen, the National, Built to Spill, Cut Copy, Beirut, New Order, LCD Soundsystem, Free Energy, the list could go on and on.) Nick also loved himself some jam bands like My Morning Jacket and Phish (hey, agree to disagree) in addition to classic acts such as Pearl Jam and the Rolling Stones. But his favorite group of all was Sigur Rós, the dreamy, ambient collective from Iceland.
I had so many classic nights going to local shows with Nick, courtesy of my cherished free tickets. Vince Staples. My Bloody Valentine. M83. Dean Wareham. Beirut. (Confession time: we tended to chatter a bit during those live sets. I think we hold the Bay Area record for most time being shushed. Not exactly a coveted award. Sorry everyone! I know that’s annoying!)
One year, I scored us some passes to the Huichica Music Festival in Sonoma. Nick tried to convince us all that he saw My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James casually hanging out among the fans, clad in a poncho (Nick was a sucker for a good poncho.) We all expressed deep skepticism of the claim, considering his prodigious intake of mushrooms that day, but social media reports later confirmed his hunch. Sorry Nick, we should have believed you.
In 2023, Nick and I travelled together to Utah for the Kilby Block Party, a sort of heaven on earth for aging indie heads like ourselves. It was just the two of us going to the festival, but our company was all we needed to have a great time.
One of the highlights of the multi-day fest was seeing the Walkmen, freshly reunited and sounding as glorious and clangorous as ever. The band’s lead singer Hamilton Leithauser punctuated their show by chucking loafs of French bread out into the crowd. Nick and I, feeling uplifted by that bit of surrealism, started hoisting up our vinyl copies of the band’s seminal album, “Bow and Arrows,” which we recently bought from the merch tent. Leithauser, apparently endowed with eagle eyes, called us out in front of the huge crowd for having purchased bootleg copies of the LP (I guess the fest was selling unsanctioned Walkmen records?) For the rest of the festival, random people would come up to us, and laugh about the dressing-down we received.
By far, the most unforgettable night that Nick and I had together was a Black Lips show at the Great American Music Hall. In a rare bit of unfettered access, I was awarded two backstage passes for the gig, courtesy of a story I had written for the SF Weekly.
We showed up to the band’s green room prior to the show, and even though I had interviewed the Lips’ Jared Swilley just a few days earlier, he clearly did not remember me. We hovered awkwardly in the background, until Nick, emboldened solely by his own personal fortitude, grabbed a bottle of Jameson from a nearby table and started swigging away. The band, perhaps impressed by his utter brazenness, immediately loosened up afterwards.
We spent the next two hours gloriously partying with the Lips and their assorted hangers-on. I ended up stage diving that night. Following the show, I was separated from Nick and I had assumed he had called it a night. After a few minutes, I was able to track him down—he was at the entrance to the backstage door, ready to keep hanging out, which is what we did, until the wee hours of the morning.
On Friday, March 14, Nick passed away, just over a year after being diagnosed with cancer. Toward the end, his condition worsened precipitously, but a large collection of his friends were able to say a last goodbye to him at the hospital that Thursday.
There were a lot of tears. And some laughs. And of course, music.
In that cramped hospital room, we played Sigur Ros and Pearl Jam and Pavement and Phish and Beirut. Despite being frail, Nick would bust out his trademark air guitar while the songs drifted out from someone’s iPhone. He could barely speak, but that didn’t stop him from mouthing the words to the Stones’ “Beast of Burden,” a longtime favorite of his.
In his final moments, Nick had his wife Silvia and their young daughter Rory by his side. His beloved Sigur Rós played as he entered into his next adventure.
It’s impossible to type those words without tearing up. But it also reminds me of the power of music.
No form of art has a relationship with ownership that is as permeable and malleable as music. And I’m not talking about possessing physical media or paying for streaming services. I’m referring to that magical moment of transference, when a song is released out into the ether, and the listener is able to impart their own feelings, emotions and associations onto that tune.
The minute that Brian King and David Prowse put out “The House That Heaven Built,” that track no longer belonged solely to the Japandroids. It also belonged to me, Nick and all our other friends who spent endless late nights screaming along to that anthem. The same goes for songs by the Black Lips, the National, M83 and every other band Nick and I saw together.
After being diagnosed, Nick was often too weak to make it out to live shows. He rallied for a few, though. The last performance we saw together was the Walkmen at Bimbo’s, which meant the return of our old frenemy, Hamilton. The band played as if they personally knew Nick’s time was limited. They were absolutely glorious—loud, raucous and unhinged. Nick was having a blast, and I was hugging him throughout the show. It felt like old times.
So now, every time I play one of our favorite songs, those bands will actually be singing about Nick to me. Whenever I hear the “Rat” or “In the New Year,” my mind will go to Bimbo’s, and that image of Nick, happy and restored, will come rushing back.
I’ll think of the epic last show. And I’ll smile.