Nick Mitchell Maiato

Site favorite Nick Mitchell Maiato’s been out of the eye for a few years now, popping up briefly for a standalone single but largely quiet since a 2020 solo album and a sterling run with One Eleven Heavy that capped in 2022. The aforementioned single closes out a new album from the songwriter, capping off a romp through Cosmic American waters that refuse to run still. The album kicks into view on a pound of barroom piano, a staple of the album’s backroom country-boiled bounty, running through its tracklist like a wild refrain. The record finds Maiato hunkering down in his Spanish studio, channeling ‘70s outlaw country and Dead-adjacent dealings that sluiced down through the studio systems, billowing heady classics like smoke under the live room door. Nick brings a crack team with him too, packing out the band with former DSDV bandmate Otto Wilberg, Little Feat drummer Tony Leone, piano virtuoso Gavin Rushing, and Grateful Dead midi-engineer and auxiliary musician Bob Bralove warming up the organ on “Critical Mass.”

With a wink and a storyteller’s smile, Nick runs down tales of charismatic characters and high plains fantasy. He wrangles some pathos out of spandex heroes down on their luck, and lets the outlaw funk sunburn under the singe of horns. It’s an album that eases onto the speakers, feeling like a familiar friend, a jukebox giant that feels like it has to have haunted more than one night out. His years holed up haven’t been squandered in the least, unfolding here with a natural swagger that smokes under the stage lights. Cue this one on the car for the slide from summer into the cool of Autumn. There’s some white line fever baked into the bones as well. An album for all seasons, it’s great to have Nick back!

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.