Nick Shoulders (1989–)

Nick Shoulders is a country singer/songwriter, an illustrator, and co-founder of the record label Gar Hole Records, based in Fayetteville (Washington County). He writes and performs music influenced by traditional Southern styles and is known for working to preserve old-time music traditions while also recognizing the South’s history of violence and oppression. Shoulders’s advocacy for left-leaning causes has drawn a new audience to the genre but has also made him a controversial figure to some in the country music sphere.

Nicklaus Robert Shoulders was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on August 18, 1989, to Katherine and Bob Shoulders; he has one brother. He spent the first few years of his life living in the Ouachita foothills near Roland (Pulaski County) until the family moved to Fayetteville in 1997. His parents owned a gym in Fayetteville until they lost it due to the failure of Arkansas National Bank in 2008.

Shoulders is of Scots-Irish and Appalachian descent, and his ancestors have lived in the Ozarks region for generations. Some of his family has also lived along the Arkansas and Louisiana border since the 1840s. He was exposed to old-time Southern music from a young age, as his maternal grandfather Pat M. Riley was a country singer and Southern Baptist gospel musician.

Shoulders attributes growing up in the Ozark and Ouachita mountains as a significant influence on his music due to a combination of the cultural, historical, and geographic contexts of the regions. Shoulders states that the necessity of calling out to people across long distances and the isolation that allowed him to practice hollering led to the development of his yodel, which is prominent in his music. His early attempts at practicing diaphragm control were while impersonating barred owl calls as a child. His father taught him to whistle, and he is also known for his bird calls, vocal elements he first incorporated during the years he spent busking on street corners. He used his teeth as an instrument when he was a child, later learning to play the drums, guitar, banjo, fiddle, harmonica, and mouth bow.

In high school, Shoulders played drums for hardcore bands, and he later established himself in the northwestern Arkansas music scene as a founding member of the punk band Thunderlizards, active from 2011 to 2015 (with a brief reunion in 2017). He would later draw a connection between the punk and country genres by arguing that they both are rooted in “do-it-yourself” culture and themes of disenfranchisement, oppression, and the struggle for social progress.

In 2008, Shoulders moved to Denver, Colorado, to attend the Rocky Mountain College for Art and Design. Soon after, one of Shoulders’s friends was beaten in a homophobic attack, and Shoulders retaliated by fighting the drunken aggressor. Shoulders was arrested on three felony counts; though the felony charges were dropped, Shoulders was charged with misdemeanor harassment. He chose to quit school and move back to Arkansas, where he spent a few years on supervised probation. While recovering from lung surgeries, he picked up a banjo and started playing old-time country in addition to punk music.

Fresh off probation at age twenty-five, Shoulders traveled the western United States, living in his van. During a brief period in Santa Cruz, California, he befriended and toured with Cheech Moosekian, who became the drummer Shoulders’s band Nick Shoulders and the Okay Crawdad. While out West, he also befriended traveling musicians from New Orleans and was invited to play music with them.

After three years of living in his van, Shoulders moved to Little Rock to support his grandmother who had suffered a burn injury in early 2017. During this time, he worked on his Nothingmaster demo. Some songs from this demo would be included in his first solo album, Lonely Like Me.

Later that year, Shoulders moved to New Orleans, with band member Grant D’Aubin joining him. He spent three years living in New Orleans but returned to Arkansas the week of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020.

With the 2017 release of Lonely Like Me, he embraced his solo career and stepped away from performing with bands such as Thunderlizards and Shawn James & the Shapeshifters. His music rapidly gained popularity after Western AF and Gems on VHS posted videos of his music on YouTube in 2020. In September 2023, he charted on Billboard for the first time, ranking No. 58 on the Top Current Album Sales chart for his album All Bad (2023) and No. 30 on the Emerging Artists chart.

Shoulders has criticized modern country music for the genre’s disconnection from regional and historical contexts. In a 2020 article, “Fake Twang: How Conservatism Stole Country Music,” Shoulders expressed concern about the whitewashing of country music. He is an advocate for uplifting country music’s diverse, working-class roots while emphasizing the importance of reckoning with the violent history of the South. Specifically, he reminds people of country music’s pan-racial origin, citing the influence of Celtic, East African, Indigenous American, Latin American, French Canadian, and Hawaiian musical traditions. His songs often explore topics such as slavery, the displacement of Native Americans, ecological destruction, and the problems with conservative politics.

Shoulders frequently performs both in person and on social media to raise money for various causes. In 2024, he released a protest ballad, “Apocalypse Never,” to raise money for the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund and Doctors Without Borders. His outspoken political beliefs have made him a controversial figure among some country music fans. After he was booked to play a concert at Songbirds Foundation in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2022, the organization received complaints on social media from people unhappy about Shoulders’s political opinions.

In fall 2020, Shoulders co-founded Gar Hole Records alongside Kurt DeLashmet, the founder of the Fayetteville record label Tape Dad. Shoulders creates all the art on his album covers, tour posters, and merchandise, and his visual art can also be found on murals at the Little Bread Company and the Smoke and Barrel Tavern in Fayetteville, as well as on beer cans designed for the Fossil Cove Brewing Company.

In early 2025, Shoulders announced that he would no longer be touring with longtime bandmates D’Aubin and Moosekian, citing a desire “not to lose friendships to the grind of relentless touring.” His fifth album, Refugia Blues, was released on October 31, 2025, on the Gar Hole label.

His musical style has been described as progressive country, outlaw country, old-time country, and folk, though he often describes his music as “grandpa music.” He splits his time between New Orleans and Fayetteville.

For additional information:
Barrett, Roger. “Flyer Q&A: Nick Shoulders Returns Home, Preps New Album and Label.” Fayetteville Flyer, December 11, 2020. https://fayettevilleflyer.com/2020/12/11/nick-shoulders-returns-home-preps-new-album-and-label/ (accessed July 29, 2025).

Gar Hole Records. https://garholerecords.com/ (accessed July 29, 2025).

Grear, Daniel. “Reclaiming Country: A Q&A with Nick Shoulders.” Arkansas Times, October 2023, pp., 64–67. Online at https://arktimes.com/rock-candy/2023/09/15/yodel-but-make-it-hardcore-a-qa-with-nick-shoulders (accessed July 29, 2025).

Nick Shoulders. https://nickshoulders.com/ (accessed July 29, 2025).

Roa, Ray. “In Tampa, Nick Shoulders Says Goodbye to Two Longtime Okay Crawdad Bandmates.” Cltampa.com, January 23, 2025. https://www.cltampa.com/music/in-tampa-nick-shoulders-says-goodbye-to-two-longtime-okay-crawdad-bandmates-19354136 (accessed July 29, 2025).

Shoulders, Nick. “Fake Twang: How White Conservatism Stole Country Music.” In These Times, March 21, 2020. https://inthesetimes.com/article/country-music-southern-accent-conservatism-confederacy-ken-burns-blues (accessed July 29, 2025).

Mac Bolt
North Little Rock, Arkansas