Nik Flagstar and the Road: A Love Story

By Chris Manson June 28, 2007 Issue

Nik Flagstar loves the road for a lot of reasons. “Growing up, my pop drove an 18-wheeler and he would take me with him in the summer,” he reflects. “I love truck stops! They have these awesome hats with cheesy sayings on them. To me, that’s the salt of the earth.”

Over a year ago I wrote: I enjoyed Nik Flagstar and friends’ recent Johnny Cash tribute show at The Sound music shop in Fort Walton Beach. Flagstar has mastered the art of noisy rock and roll, but he’s also an exceptional singer in alone-with-guitar mode, as evidenced by his rendition of Hurt and a wonderful original song about wanting “to hear Cash sing a gospel song.” Look for a profile of this charismatic young artist in a future installment of this column.

Okay, so I didn’t think a whole year would pass before I got the story down. The Panhandle Pair is no more, but Nik Flagstar and His Dirty Mangy Dogs are riding high. They’ve laid down some tracks on the 22-minute, six-track CD Coyotes—half recorded live at Gainesville’s Backstage Lounge, the rest recorded in Flagstar’s home. Hopefully, some smart independent label will hear Coyotes and take on this intensely entertaining trio.

Flagstar returns to the Sound tomorrow night, June 29, and I urge you to check him out since he’s planning to move to Columbus, Ga. at summer’s end. “They’ve got a really good music scene there,” Flagstar says. The Sound appearance—the bill includes Georgia bands 213 and Thrill of a Gunfight, as well as a side project that includes Flagstar and bass player J. “Panhandle Slim” Pecker, 23rd Century — is followed by a July 5 gig at Sluggo’s in Pensacola. Then Flagstar is “hitting the entire South and going further west, to the Jet Lounge in Houston” among other places for most of August.

In the 20 years Flagstar has called Fort Walton Beach home he’s gone from 16-year-old keyboardist in a blues band called the Jamesons and numerous bands that never made it out of the garage to a musician for hire in more bands than he can remember. Flagstar played in “emo” bands, punk bands, and a group called Agnostia that dabbled in “death metal” but was “sort of like what we do now, mixing a thousand different genres.” Flagstar also appeared as a solo act around the coffeehouse circuit prior to forming his Dirty Mangy Dogs.

“When I was doing the ‘metal’ thing, I was young and strong.” Flagstar is 26 now, and says he has to “put songs with more notes in them at the beginning of our sets.” The various bands — as well as his family’s love for music — turned him on to every style imaginable. “I can’t play something that’s just one type of music. It’s not in my nature. I get a country verse, then it turns into something else. It just fits. It’s not complicated. It’s American Southern music—country and blues. I don’t think we get our due for creating rock and roll. Some Southerners may not speak well, but they probably have more dealings with people of different races and more in common.”

Flagstar’s uncle— a very successful Nashville songwriter whose tunes have been recorded by Reba McEntire, Alabama, and Dolly Parton — taught him piano riffs and guitar chords and turned him on to Hank and Cash. “A lot of the country I play is not in the Nashville establishment style,” Flagstar says, although this is not intended as a slap in the face to one of his favorite relations. Flagstar’s mother was a strong influence, too. “Most families sit around the TV or don’t hang around at all. We sit around the piano and play Hank songs. (My mom) has a beautiful alto voice. We went to a lot of different churches when I was a kid. At any Baptist Church, there’s always this one lady who’s more into it than anyone else—that was my mom.”

On Coyotes, Flagstar prefaces his song Foggy with an explanation that it was inspired by a job he’s glad he no longer has. “I was a night auditor at a hotel in Destin. It’s the loneliest job. It didn’t pay well. I was getting pale. I lost 90 percent of my friends. That’s my vaguest song, lyrically. I try to be more of a storyteller.”

Foggy, like all of Flagstar’s songs, was written on “this beater guitar an ex-girlfriend found on the side of the road. I haven’t changed the strings since I was 20. It doesn’t really tune up — my E chord is never really in tune. I own a lot of guitars — most serious musicians own tons of instruments. I’ve always kept it because someday I might want a really out-of-tune guitar sound.”

Flagstar plans to record a solo acoustic EP soon. It will in all likelihood include the Johnny Cash tribute, A Tune for All the Brethren. Additional Dirty Mangy Dogs material is available for your listening pleasure at myspace.com/nikflagstarandhisdirtymangydogs.

“We plan on getting to Columbus, getting some crappy jobs we can quit at any moment, and touring as much as we can book,” Flagstar says. “There’s no secret to getting your band known. You have to play a lot of shows. You have to work your ass off.”

Corrections
In my profile of Kiskeya last issue, I neglected to mention the guys who rap on the upcoming Reanimation of Music album. They are the Kinfolk Cartel: Boogie, Trae, Unknown, and Gutta. Sorry ‘bout that guys.

Chris Recommends (Revenge of the Old-Timers Edition):
Ian Hunter: Shrunken Heads (Yep Roc)
Porter Wagoner: Wagonmaster (Anti-)
Yusuf: An Other Cup (YA/Atlantic)
Bruce Springsteen and the Sessions Band: Live in Dublin (CD & DVD) (Columbia)
DVD—Marvin Gaye: The Real Thing 1964-1981 (Universal)

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