The last time Nick Shoulders took the stage in Columbus, the Arkansawyer wore a cloak and drank out of a goblet adorned with skulls. Shoulders, who loves Halloween, is known for elaborate costumes and shows during the fall but brought that same aesthetic to Skully’s Music Diner on an April evening in 2024. Friday night, Shoulders was back in Columbus and back at Skully’s. There was no cape. No brooding red lighting. In shorts, a shirt with the sleeves cutoff and a camo ball cap, Shoulders brought a set of new songs, old favorites on a night that seemed like it could have gone a whole different direction.
At concerts, or anywhere really, trusting anything that anybody says can be tough. Behind every story or quip, I always have a sense of “oh that is probably just for entertainment.” I thought that same thing during the opening set of Jack Studer, Shoulders’ guitarist.
Studer, fresh off the release of his 2026 “Falling Forward” LP, started the night before also playing the full set with Shoulders. Sitting on a stool, sipping from a Miller Lite, Studer played songs that are biographical not only for himself but the lives of those he runs across in his life of odd jobs. Take “The Ballad of Butch Nasty,” which came from the $20 Studer earned by cleaning out what he eventually found was the houseboat of a recently deceased local named Butch Nasty, which he did not find out until his third time going through and cleaning it out.
That story and Studer’s between song banter did not raise suspicion of telling a fable. Studer joked about his own life, kindly asked people to stop clapping along to his songs (saying it is cheesy “but in a good way,”) and the two times he played show and tell. The first came with a small plastic baby. Not a baby doll, think of a squishy plastic naked baby that fits in the palm of your hand. That represented Studer and his pregnant wife’s daughter, expected to come sometime in the fall. Studer passed “baby fetus” around and checked in on her multiple times throughout the set.
Photo of Jack Studer by Thomas Costello
Then there was the second item shown around, or more accurately it was a puff, puff, pass situation. Studer shared that Shoulders, who he called a stoner, had a weed drink they bought soon after crossing into Ohio that morning and to put it in a nice way — it messed him up. Studer took out a weed pen, took a hit and then jokingly asked if the crowed wanted to pass that around too, which they did.
Within a song, smoke bellowed above the crowd as numerous concertgoers shared germs and more. Columbus Calling stayed drug free.
In the moment, it was hard to believe Shoulders was struggling backstage. After all, Shoulders is a seasoned touring musician. Maybe it was a fun way for Studer to get a laugh from the crowd and an interesting story he uses night in and night out to start smoking on stage himself. Studer gets all of my apologies for doubting him.
Shoulders came on stage and sat at his microphone/drum set and that serious demeanor and showmanship from two years prior was far gone. The singer, yodeler and whistler Shoulders immediately warned the crowd about his predicament. Within the first three songs, Shoulders missed lyrics, stumbled over his words and after an early number, told his band that they were skipping the next song on the setlist because it was too much for him in the moment. Also, I think Shoulders smiled more in the moments he stepped onto the stage on Friday than he did for the entirety of his last trip to Ohio, when he did not dare break character.
After a few songs though, Shoulders took off his hat, revealed a big swath of hair and put on sunglasses that he didn’t realize were there for the first 10 minutes. Shoulders went from being passed out on a tile floor in a hallway backstage to the showman that the nearly sold out Skully’s Music Diner expected.
Even during the first few songs, Shoulders still managed to simultaneously play guitar and drums at the same time. While it was not a full kit, he stayed on beat and the four-person band mixed in unreleased new tracks with tried and true favorites. The new songs came from the upcoming album titled “The Tradition of Dissent,” Shoulders announced. If released in 2026, it is the second full length album released by the co-founder of Gar Hole Records in two years, following the 2025 LP “Refugia Blues,” which was not a full band album but more of a one-man protest gospel sermon.
High or not, Shoulders passion behind the songs remained the same as the singer shared stories about gentrification and the destruction of nature across the country, pushing for freedom on the night of Juneteenth because if “everyone isn’t free, no one is free.” There is also the fight against data centers and capitalism as a whole, citing its plight against the Earth and the working person. Take one of the bumper stickers Shoulders had for sale that said “When its easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, one must die, so the other may live.”
The former punk band singer never shies away from the same kind of punk views, which are not exclusively punk views when considering the history of the south, abolition and the once anti-government views of country music before it was turned into one of the main drivers of blind patriotism.
However, the sounds coming out of the band were all country western. A third of the way through the set, all four musicians stood together behind an old fashioned country microphone with a kind warning beforehand to keep crowd chatter to a minimum because the mics picked up everything. During those songs, where Shoulders struggled to tune his banjo and misplaced nearly every accessory he needed, the band played square dance numbers, standup bass player Georgia Parker sang “Your Cheatin’ Heart” by Hank Williams and Shoulders picked up his mouthbow and played it for one track.
As the show went on, Shoulders admitted that he was feeling much better after earlier in the night sharing how wild it was going from asleep in the back to on stage playing music in a manner of minutes.
That transition was similar to the one taken by Shoulders before this tour titled “Apocalypse, Never!” Shoulders shared that in the previous months, he spent most of his time in nature. While the singer/songwriter and country historian did post online now and then to share his views on current event, Shoulders spent his time by the rivers and creeks of his home. Trading that for a life on the road, walking through downtown city centers and playing for rooms of hundreds of fans a night can be jarring.
Like in his touring life, Shoulders kept the story moving regardless of the trials in his life or the struggles of the world as a whole. Leaving the concert, one cannot help but feel the punk ethos to fight back, which is really a country music staple. If you are listening to the right stuff.
