Nicholas St. James expands his band and gets aggressive

At one point in our interview, Nicholas St. James calls his singing “aggressive.” If you’ve had the good fortune of seeing the Lawrence folk singer live, you’d have no problem agreeing with him. St. James’ expansive voice is its own tremendously versatile instrument, and he works it with a flair that borders on vaudevillian.

The full exuberance of his singing can be heard on St. James’ newest album, Theatres, which he releases on Monday, February 22, at the Lawrence Arts Center. Ahead of the show, I chatted with St. James about the recording process and how he came to harness that big voice.

The Pitch: Tell me about the decision to record Theatres live. Did you record all 10 songs in one take?

St. James: We used no more than three takes, and some songs we used the first take that we’d done. Part of it was just knowing that if you don’t get it in three takes, that the song is either awful or not meant for the record.

You brought in two additional players for this record, even though you’ve made a name for yourself as a one-man band.

Yeah, we have Colby Earleywine on drums and percussion. And the other one was Michael Stephenson. He played mellotron and some guitar. I wanted it to be a good representation of me with what you might imagine a mellotron or another guitarist might sound like.

Doing it live, you can tell that the most dominant thing on the record is my voice and my guitar, and the rest just sits in the background. Also, I find that all my favorite records — stuff like Delta blues or early rock and roll — they all sound like that. And with live — sometimes I think folks can find themselves in trouble when they get in a studio and have limitless options, so it’s good for me to say, “Hey, this is how we’re going to do it.” It was a much easier way to work — there was no going back and tweaking or changing things.

You’re also bringing Colby and Michael with you for the release show and playing as a trio. Do you see yourself expanding to a full band?

In 2016, I sat down and asked myself, “How can I grow a bit more?” And for me, it was adding a friend or two — adding keys or a bass player. It can be a number of things. I’m not necessarily locked into a band setup. I’d like to just add instruments at will, so if the [recurring weekly] show has just a slot to fill [with another artist], I can do that. This year, you’ll start seeing a few more people onstage with me, hopefully.

But even though there are three of us on the record, I’ve been forming these songs for a couple months before we started recording. “Yodel Waltz” was the only song that was written for the record, and everything else can be performed with just me and an acoustic guitar.

You have such an exaggerated way of singing. When we last spoke, about a year ago, you mentioned that you had only been singing for about a year. How has your voice and the way you use it evolved?

I record everything I do. Everything from the very first open-mic I did until the gig I did last night, and I make it a point to listen to everything the night of. Obviously, there’s repetition, but I find things that work and don’t work and things that I think were awful ideas, and that’s the benefit of being solo. I can try things on the spot with my voice.

I’ve learned a bit more about what I can and can’t do to my voice. For me, it’s about making my voice as theatrical as possible — that’s something I’ve worked a lot on. For my show, the voice is the backbone. It’s the solo. It’s everything. So I’m always trying to figure out: How can I make the voice more theatrical while still singing in an entertaining way? And I’m still working on the technical part of it, so that I don’t blow something out in the course of a two hour set.

Tell me about your songwriting process. So many artists are inspired by their own personal life, but your songs are more story-driven.

When people ask what kind of music I play, I’m a folk artist. My live shows might be slightly more aggressive than your average singer-songwriter, but it’s still folk. And within that, it’s storytelling. For me, personally, I’m not very good at writing songs that are about me. When I do that, I get into the trouble of wanting to include too many details. My favorite writers — Robert Johnson, Skip James, Bob Dylan — they all wrote storytelling songs with just that one little bit that could make it personal. A good song, to me, is something that’s specific enough, but that can be relatable to anyone in the world.