Growing up in Georgia, Nick Alligood did everything from hunting and fishing to four-wheeling and mud bogging in his truck. There is no doubt that his southern upbringing has a strong presence in his music. Days before the release of his debut EP ‘Chaser,’ Nick took some time to talk to New England Country Music.
Music was always a part of Nick’s life, when he was about five years old he said his great-grandmother bought him a little guitar and a microphone headset. He said she would have lodge meetings with her friends she would make him sing ‘Achy Breaky Heart.’ He also told us with a chuckle, “You can’t leave this part out, I had these little red cowboy boots. I mean like bright red.”
Growing up, Nick said he always wanted to play music but he never thought it would become a reality. He started out playing the drums in church and he always thought he was going to be a drummer. During his senior year of high school one of his friends started a band and Nick would fill in on acoustic guitar. Then in college he kept playing guitar and “one day it just clicked.”
The first time Nick played a show by himself he was asked to fill in for someone who had cancelled. Nick said he only knew how to sing and play together about six songs and he ended up playing for about two hours. After the show a man came up to him and asked him to play for his wife’s birthday the next week. Nick said after that he was like, “Man, maybe I can start making money doing this. Then I went from playing in bars for free and opening up for my buddies who were in these terrible bands to touring around the US in like a year and a half.”
Nick told us his favorite thing about country music is that “You can feel everything that is being said, whether it happens to you or not and whether that artist even wrote that song or not. Whoever wrote that song makes you feel what they were feeling while they were writing it, there’s always a story. It’s not like pop music and rap music and stuff like that, you can’t paint a picture. Every time I hear a good country song I can play what I would imagine the music video to be, I can feel the story.”
Before making the move to music, Nick was working for an energy operations company out of Atlanta and he operated a power plant near the Florida line. He said he really enjoyed that job and if it wasn’t for music he would still be working there. Making music is where Nick wants to be, he told us “It’s everything. This is my entire life. This consumes me pretty much to be honest with you.”
Last January Nick made the move from Georgia to Nashville, and said there really isn’t much difference between the two except, “There’s no pine trees and dirt roads.” He told us Nashville isn’t anything like he imagined it to be and that “It’s a huge city, but it’s a really small town.” In addition to moving to Nashville, Nick has also signed with 7-Hills. He said life since signing with 7-Hills has been “90 to nothing, non-stop, 24/7. I was already busy, but it’s taking busy to a whole other level.”
Nick’s debut EP ‘Chaser’ was released on November 24, 2015 and he told us that the process of recording the EP was “Incredible.” Recording the EP was his first full studio experience and it was beyond what he was expecting. In the demos he had done before everything was done one by one, but this time the session artists knew his songs already and played them like they were playing a show. Nick said “I laid the vocals one time and then just sat down and watched them mold everything. That was amazing.”
We’ll be hearing a lot more coming from Nick Alligood in the future. In addition to the EP, he’s got three music videos planned and hopefully will be releasing more music soon. Nick said he will be hitting the road strong at the first of the year.