Nick George

Nick George does not play for a living. He is the person Trevor texts when he wants to know whether something is worth the drive, five days out of seven, and Trevor credits him with the introduction to Luke Black and Mountain Grass Unit. He is a listener, and on this show that is the qualification.

"I wouldn't say an expert in the field of all things Billy, but I'm just a crazy fan."

Two fans, opposite corners

They met through the Infamous Stringdusters fan base and worked out that they had come into bluegrass at about the same time by about the same route. Trevor had the southeastern advantage, a few hours from Nashville. Nick had Portland, where touring bands arrive late, arrive rarely, and arrive expensive. His answer is quality over quantity. He sees the ones that come west and streams the rest on nugs.net, after the fact if work gets in the way.

2015, the opener nobody had heard of

He went to the Wonder Ballroom in November 2015 to see Greensky Bluegrass. The opener was a solo guitar player with a name Nick thought took some nerve. Ten seconds in he started working his way up from the soundboard because he wanted to see the hands. Before the set ended Greensky came out to back the kid, which Nick read as the endorsement it was.

Seven and a half hours to Boise

In November 2018 Billy Strings played Revolution Hall in Portland, about 900 people. The next night he was at the Olympic Venue in Boise, a room of about 300. Nick got in the car on very little sleep and made the drive.

"We have to do this. We gotta go on four and a half hours sleep and drive to Boise to see this because we can't see this ever again."

His case on the Billy effect

Nick and Trevor disagree on one question. Has Billy Strings taken the air out of the rest of progressive bluegrass? Trevor thinks he took a large share of it. Nick does not accept a single cause. He points to inflation, to what a ticket costs now, to what touring costs a band now, and to streaming royalties that pay fractions of a penny, a framework he credits to Chris Pandolfi's podcast Inside the Musician's Brain. Package bills, to him, read as cost containment and as a way to justify coming out to a market like his. He thinks the bands still building stand to gain the most.

"All this stuff is hard to measure, but I firmly believe that the net effect is going to be super positive."

What keeps him going back is not technique, and he says so plainly. He can name the flatpickers he rates highest, and the draw he is describing is a different thing: a room, a following, and a door held open for everyone behind it.

What he is pushing

Mountain Grass Unit, the Birmingham band whose fiddler Josiah Nelson has his own episode, stayed at Nick's house on a Portland run. He talks about them as people before he talks about them as players. East Nash Grass is the current obsession, and he calls them the most underrated band on the scene.

Billy Strings also sent him backward. He had not listened seriously to Larry Sparks before, and thinks Sparks belongs in the founding fathers conversation. He went deep enough into Doc Watson to walk Trevor through why Watson matters, down to the swing band with no fiddler and the decision to play fiddle tunes on guitar instead.

"I am in a bluegrass cave."