“There’s so many alternative individuals from so many alternative locations bringing their cultural backgrounds and distinctive vantage factors of seeing the world and bringing all of it collectively,” shares County, who beforehand lived in Austin, New York City, and Pennsylvania. He has lived in Miami since 2011.
County speaks fondly about Miami’s ever-changing music scene, from the various proficient jazz musicians popping out of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music to the shuttered experimental venue Space Mountain. He additionally touches on historic moments in Miami music, just like the success of Raul Malo and the Grammy-winning nation band the Mavericks or the Coconut Grove tales involving Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, and David Crosby.
Naturally, the wild variety in Miami’s nature, music, historical past, and folks would encourage Nick County to enterprise outdoors of his ordinary Americana and nation sound.
But it is a dialog along with his childhood pal, Ted Robinson, that served because the genesis for Coin of Gold, County’s newest album launched in the present day, April 28.
County and Robinson grew up collectively in a small city in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, and to the current day, proceed to collaborate as musicians.
“We have been two artistic type of freaks. He would dance round, and I’d costume bizarre. We did not actually match the city,” County says.
The pair shared music, from Norteño to bossa nova and basic salsa.
“We began speaking about cumbia music. We have been each tremendous into this compilation, Los Mirlos, a Peruvian psychedelic cumbia compilation from the ’70s. We began chatting: What if we have been to create a file like this? Something totally different than a rustic album,” he says.
In his early 20s, County, who was dwelling in Austin, satisfied Robinson to go away Asheville, North Carolina, for New York City, the place they performed collectively in a cow-punk/nation band.
County finally left New York to dwell in Miami, whereas Robinson now lives in Montana, however the distance wasn’t sufficient to maintain the pair from teaming up once more. “It simply looks as if at any time when Ted and I’d come again into one another’s orbs, we might be on the identical web page, and it occurred once more,” he says.
Just over a yr in the past, Robinson flew to Miami and joined County on the Selina Gold Dust Motel for a three-day keep. Each introduced a bucket of concepts, and Robinson introduced a set of his mom’s poems. On Valentine’s Day final yr, they checked out of the motel with ten tracks that might come collectively as Coin of Gold, sharing the title of one of many poems and the album’s title observe.
Three months after the songs have been written, County and Robinson recorded the album, primarily on the Bridge, with a protracted checklist of Miami musicians that County rounded up — the checklist is lengthy sufficient that he retains observe of it in an Excel sheet. The doc contains the core Coin of Gold ensemble, plus one other checklist of featured musicians throughout totally different tracks.
“There’s this transient nature of Miami that pervades the whole lot, and the extra I considered it, it made me extra need to make a file down right here,” County explains. “The cliché is that it is like a time capsule. You get an ensemble collectively of all of those nice musicians down right here — individuals like Eric Escanes, Brian Potts, April Nicole, and Ana Paz — you pull all these individuals collectively, and also you make one thing collectively, and it displays a second in time.”
Coin of Gold marks the primary time County has recorded an album in South Florida. His 2021 album, A Colorful Corner of Northeastern Pennsylvania, was recorded in his hometown together with associates and musicians that he introduced together with him from Miami.
“[Coin of Gold] has taken me additional away from the place I come from, despite the fact that in a whole lot of methods it is introduced me nearer,” County provides. “I’m Latin by blood, however I wasn’t raised as Latin, like lots of my associates that grew up down right here or in El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, or Puerto Rico. But it is nonetheless part of me, so this was a method of touching base and getting nearer to that.”
The album not solely shares County’s story, however many tracks all through learn like slice-of-life tales. Over a psychedelic cumbia beat, the observe “Scotty” tells the quirky story of a man County met outdoors the motel. “The Limerick” begins with a spoken-word comedic story a couple of fictitious band taking part in on the real-life pub of the identical title.
With layered percussions, harmonies, some nation parts, and a psychedelic contact, Coin of Gold is harking back to the Grateful Dead, particularly how every music makes you need to dance round like a carefree deadhead.
Coin of Gold made its dwell debut a yr in the past on the Central for Subtropical Affairs. It will return to the identical venue, now renamed Understory, on May 17, giving Miamians one other likelihood — and doubtless the final likelihood, since rounding up a bunch {of professional} musicians for one present is not simple — to catch these songs dwell.
Nick County and the Coin of Gold Band. With the Mauskovic Dance Band. 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 17, at Understory, 7135 NW First Ct., Miami; instagram.com/understorymia. Tickets price $12 by way of eventbrite.com.