L.A. born & raised Nick Waterhouse, in concert at the 2012 Trans Musicales Festival in France – recorded on December 12, 2012 by Radio France International.
Nick Waterhouse was born in Santa Ana, California. He was raised in Huntington Beach, California, the son of a fireman and a saleswoman. He took up guitar at age 12. As a young teen he found himself more interested in increasingly obscure and eclectic Americana outside of the pop and contemporary rock of his peers. He has cited Bert Berns, Mose Allison, John Lee Hooker, Van Morrison, and a reading of Peter Guralnick’s portrait of Dan Penn as early influences in his musical development.
Waterhouse started his career as guitarist and singer-songwriter with Intelligista (2002–2003), a combo compared to the Animals and High Numbers-era Who. This band performed in the Orange County underground music scene that yielded artists such as Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, The Growlers, Cold War Kids. In 2002, the band entered the Distillery in Costa Mesa to record a radio broadcast and a 7-inch single, beginning a friendship between Waterhouse and owner-engineer Mike McHugh. At the end of high school, the band split, finding Waterhouse attending San Francisco State University in San Francisco.
In San Francisco, Waterhouse continued pursuing playing music with little luck, concurrently becoming more involved with the burgeoning DJ community. During this time, he became a fixture at the all-vinyl Rooky Ricardo’s Records in the Lower Haight District, eventually taking a job. He has repeatedly cited apprenticeship to owner Richard Vivian and the shop’s connections to local soul club scene as a great influence. During this time he also struck up a friendship with Matthew Correia, later of the Allah-Las.
In Waterhouse’s music, the time is both now and then. The past is the present is the future. The sound is classic yet unclassifiable. Played once, his album sounds immediately like a collection of great songs. Play it again – and you will – his work feels like a novel or a film slowly unveiling its secrets, kaleidoscopic in narrative complexity.
And there you have it – Press Play and let the music do the rest.
