There was a little pocket of time in the late '90s and early 2000s when the Free Street Taverna was a place where the Piners and King Memphis and the Coming Grass and Diesel Doug and the Long Haul Truckers could play in the window and it all felt just a little bit like Nashville every once in a while. Better than that, actually.Owner Pete Kostopoulos wasn't the best with names or details sometimes, but he had good taste, mixing in surf bands with just about anybody who liked stand-up basses and electric hollow-body guitars. Kostopoulos was the first one to tell me to check out Jerks of Grass, and he was the first one to rave about this kid, Nick Danger, who could really tear up a swinging blues and rockabilly guitar.
I'm not sure if Pete named him that, or if he named himself, but I do know that people loved Nick Curran as both a musician and a person (and he never recorded under the Danger moniker). He was sweet and friendly and a dynamo on stage. God, he was fun to watch. Like Jerry Lee Lewis with a guitar.
Soon he was headed off to Texas, to tour with Ronnie Dawson and then Kim Lenz as part of her Jaguars, and already by 2002 he was coming back to his old stomping grounds with his band, the Nitelifes (later, they'd be the Lowlifes), and his first album on Austin's Blind Pig Records, Doctor Velvet. And boy was he smooth. The kind of guitar player who made it look completely effortless. It was no wonder when he caught on with the Fabulous Thunderbirds for a while, or showed up on True Blood.
On Saturday, he died of cancer at the age of 35. Just about a year ago, there was a benefit for him at Bayside Bowl and the word was out that he was sick, but the news still made people gasp. Nick Danger is dead? That just doesn't make sense.
Related:
Throwing back shots of Whiskey Kill, The Rock Off is on, and other music news, Sun Gods in Exile at SXSW, and more, More
- Throwing back shots of Whiskey Kill
Diesel Doug hung 'em up a while ago, and King Memphis don't play out much anymore, so Whiskey Kill are clearly filling a bit of a void.
- The Rock Off is on, and other music news
Tone King Andy Argondizza has organized a benefit show for Nick Curran, who was recently diagnosed with cancer and, being a musician, isn’t exactly rocking all-inclusive health insurance.
- Sun Gods in Exile at SXSW, and more
Tough news to hear about Nick Curran, the one-time Nick Danger, who left Portland for Austin.
- Fighting fire with smokescreens
I could barely see my own hands through the darkness and thick smoke — but I could hear.
- The magic of mushrooms
It's a hot, sticky July afternoon and I'm riding shotgun in Uncle Bob's pick-up truck. We've just spent the past couple hours walking off-trail through the woods, and we're doing much better than I had expected.
- Rocky pot
Late last May, a goofy-looking guy named Charles Austin Corn — a student at the University of Tennessee — was shot in South Knoxville in what looked like an attempt to rob his stash. He was unable to communicate with police after the shooting and died five days later.
- Secret Harbor
A home for the criminally insane it might not be, but the real-life Shutter Island is, like the one in the new Martin Scorsese film that hits theaters this week, a spooky and controversial land mass in Boston Harbor that is indeed off-limits to the public.
- Parallel worlds
Playwright Karen Zacarias would seem to have taken long drafts of Tom Stoppard Elixir.
- The power of money
While a cadre of conservative Democrats continues to conspire with Washington's mendacious Republican minority to block national health-care reform, the nation's largest health-benefits company — amusingly called WellPoint — is going about its business of screwing policyholders and scoring record profits in the process.
- Weapon of choice
As amazing as it seems in this age of 24-hour-a-day punditry, there are still issues about which it is permissible not to have an opinion.
- Screams from solitary
The 132-man supermax unit within the 925-man Maine State Prison is an expensive, taxpayer-funded torture chamber that for 18 years has sucked in mostly nonviolent, mostly mentally ill prisoners and ground them up by means of mind-destroying solitary confinement, officially sanctioned beatings, “restraint” devices resembling those in medieval dungeons, sexual humiliation, and psychiatric, medical, and legal neglect.
- Less
Topics:
Music Features
, Nick Curran, Diesel Doug, Pete Kostopoulos, More
, Nick Curran, Diesel Doug, Pete Kostopoulos, King Memphis, The Coming Grass, the Piners, danger, Less