Nick Vigarino
Seattle, Washington, United States | Established. Jan 01, 1986 | SELF
Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
“With slashing slide guitar, powerful vocals, funky licks, modern lyrics, and his ‘slop jar delta funk’ blues, his style elevates the ‘blues’ to a place where roots are respected, yet nudged towards the future. He consistently captures, then rivets listeners with precise, passionate performances.” - Jefferson Magazine (Sweden)
“The Music He's been compared to Ry Cooder and Leo Kottke. His style is a fusion of the Chicago and the Delta blues... hip-hopped up with an amplified acoustic bottleneck, wailing against a VERY funky bump-and-grind rhythm section. The sum of the whole is nothing less than marvelous. A must hear." - Victory Music Review
"We were promised that this guy smoked, but even that's putting things lightly...Nick took to dismantling what was left of all sensibility with the skill of a surgeon and the impact of a wrecking ball." - Washington Blues Society
“That slide is naaasty!!” - Bo Diddley
“Vigarino radiates an unpredictable fervor with slashing slide guitar, powerful vocals, funky licks, modern lyrics, and his homemade ‘slop-jar Delta funk’ blues” - Jet City Blues - Seattle, WA
“Nick Vigarino will make you a firm believer…You will come to know the pain, intensity, and sound of the blues like never before. You shouldn’t miss this experience. It’s cut and dried. This guy kicks ass.” - Musician Magazine NY, NY
Discography
*Temptation Road - Nick Vigarino - Meantown Music, Stanwood, Wa
*Victims of Cool - Nick Vigarino - Merrimack Records, Seattle, Wa
*The Ghost of Time - Nick Vigarino & Kathi McDonald - Merrimack Records, Seattle, Wa
*Nick Vigarino and Professor Washboard - HBS Records - Bremen, Germany
*Above & Beyond - Kathi McDonald - Merrimack Records, Seattle, Wa
*Save Your Breath - Kathi McDonald – Hypertension Records, Hamburg, Germany
*Back Porch Gossip - Seattle Women - Joe Records, Seattle, Wa
*Aint Gonna Cry No More - Kate Hart - Biograph Records, Oxford, Ms
*Live at Cole’s – Jerry Miller & Co – Owl Wood Records, Tacoma, Wa
*Leap of Faith – Mark Riley - P.T.M. Records, Seattle, Wa
*Do You Wanna Dance – Rick Allen – Scriven Records, Marysville, Wa
Television:
*Travelers - The Discovery Channel – Seattle, Wa. TDC-NY, NY (Presently in rotation)
*Nick Vigarino’s Meantown Blues Live – Bumbershoot – Seattle, Wa – live video webcast in conjunction with German film documentary In the City – artistdirect.com – Encino, Ca
*Live On Tour with the Kathi McDonald Trio – Channel 3- Brugg, Switzerland (1hr)
*Nick Vigarino’s Meantown Blues – PBS Channel 9 - Seattle, Wa. (Presently in rotation)
*Blues for Christmas – CBC – Vancouver, BC, Canada
*Seattle Blues Showcase – Channel 29 – Public Access – Seattle, Wa (1hr)
Compilations:
*The House That Music Built – CBS Promotions Group, Oakland, Ca
*Pie In The Sky – Transatlantic Management, Tucson, Az
*The Gene Pool – 3-23 Reckerds – Seattle, Wa
*Seattle Rhythm & Blues, Volume 1 – Axiom Records, Seattle, Wa
Original Compositions Covered:
*Elbow Room (Nick Vigarino) – Kate Hart – Aint Gonna Cry No More - Biograph Records, Oxford, Ms
*Corndog (Nick Vigarino) - Mark Riley – Lead Suit - Dog’s Ear Records – Renton, Wa
*Don’t Give Up On Me (Nick Vigarino/J. Melnikas) – Kathi McDonald – Above & Beyond - Merrimack Records, Seattle, Wa
Photos
Bio
“Nick took the 2016 Best of the Blues Award for Slide Blues Guitar and for Best Solo/ Duo Act in 2015. The Washington Blues Society has placed him in their Hall of Fame. Having earned finalist status at the 2011 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Nick Vigarino is now globally recognized as one of the top blues acts in the world. Be it a juke or a major festival, Nick delivers the story with a stinging guitar that is second to none.”- Seattle Times (Seattle,WA)
"Many a bluesman paid backbreaking dues chopping cotton in the flat Delta fields of Mississippi and Arkansas to line the pockets of rich plantation owners. There was no cotton crop to tend to in the grimy rust belt town of Youngstown, Ohio in the 1960’s, but there was grinding, dirty work for some, as human grist in the mills of U.S. and Republic Steels. Where thirty years labor earned you meager wages, and for the lucky, a few years of retirement spent with an aching back and a hacking cough in the dreary shadow of belching smokestacks. Nick Vigarino, like 10,000 other Bohemian Hungarians, Italians, Irish, and Blacks, was born to this dismal blue-collar legacy.
Nick had his way out of this planned human obsolescence before he even knew it. In his early teens, Nick fell into possession of a battered guitar, feebly equipped with one string. As fate would have it, he learned to play the guitar in the exact same way as a hundred seminal blues musicians had two generations before him, on a homemade one-string diddley bo. Without the pious influences of Peter Green or Eric Clapton, Nick flailed at his one-string and peered deep within himself for the foundations of intensely personal music to come. With a poet’s fierce commitment to birthing his own music, he continued to play on ever-improving instruments the angry and mournful melodies in his head.
The mean town survivor eventually formed Meantown Blues, carrying his music into the bars and roadhouses of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Payin’ dues in the thousand-night march from stage to stage, burying his highly original and volatile blues in boozy sets mostly comprised of the radio dictated honky-tonk of the time.
Vigarino radiates an unpredictable fervor with slashing slide guitar, powerful vocals, funky licks, modern lyrics and his slop jar delta funk blues. His style elevates the blues to a place where the roots are respected, yet nudged towards the future. He consistently captures, then rivets listeners with precise, passionate performances.
—Ray Varner; Blues Historian, Ethno-musicologist, and critic, contributes his writings to many music publications, including Living Blues Magazine, Jefferson (Sweden) and Caledonia.
Band Members
Links
