Uncle Nick

It isn’t just that he’s a whippet man, although that doesn’t hurt, of course.

I looked for a Joe Ely CD to play in the car before we headed out this morning and in the low light I couldn’t spot one. I grabbed Nick Lowe’s The Convincer instead. I mean no disloyalty here. I’m getting older and I see our culture coarsening and mutating faster than an unchecked bacterial infection, and playing Nick, or Joe, or Walter, or Johnny, or Ronny, or Glen, or Terry, or Lyle, or Elvis, or The Beatles, or The Hollies all carries the same comforting weight to me these days.

There will never be another white-hot, rubber burning, easy-grinning, mic-leaning, refrigerator door hammering force like Ely, for sure. I’m pretty certain he has packed it all up and taken it with him. That's OK with me. Who else could carry it off like he did?

There’s nobody like Nick, either, is there?

Whenever we listen to him Ronny and I talk about the audacious trick he has pulled off. From long-legged, peacocking pop star to cardigan and horn-rimmed glasses touting, silver haired godfather of, well godfather of what exactly?

It isn’t just that Nick ploughs an ancient furrow, it is that the furrow is as lost to time as are Texan bars and good manners.

If you are going to be dropping musical references to Floyd Kramer and Tennessee Ernie Ford and cutting Faron Young and Merle Kilgore songs while crooning like Don Williams and Jim Reeves then you might just as well be hoping to top the Times Literary Supplement’s best-sellers list by writing your novel in Chaucerian English. How does he ever sell any records? Does he sell any records? Does anyone sell any records? But doesn’t he make the best records you’ve ever heard?

I hope this tomfoolery has made him very rich.