- April 19, 2024
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Local singer/songwriter ‘Captain’ Nick Nicholson releases his second album, ‘Call of the Sea,’ Nov. 4, in Key West.
With a black acoustic guitar propped on his knee at Flagler Beach’s Beachouse Beanery, “Captain” Nick Nicholson points to a couple across the room. They’re sipping coffee, chatting, quietly blending in.
They could be the subject of one of his songs, he says. Anybody in this town could be.
“I feel a kinship to the people here,” he says. “This feels like home.”
Nicholson, who releases his second trop-rock album, “Call of the Sea,” Nov. 4 through Melbourne’s Captain Music Enterprises LLC, was raised in South Carolina. But after being forced into retirement in 2005 following a heart attack and quadruple bypass, Flagler Beach is where he found peace. And it’s a peace he has embraced in his songwriting, which has elements of rock and roll, reggae and Caribbean rhythms.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to retire at 49,” he says. “I missed work so bad I couldn’t stand it.”
Nicholson, now 54, was a provider his whole life, first in the Navy, then as a maintenance man, then as a towboat captain. But after the heart surgery, all of a sudden, he felt he wasn’t much of anything.
“It messes with you,” he says of retirement. “Nothing’s ever the same again.”
But it got better. After moving to Flagler Beach, he decided to focus on music full-time, which he has been doing for the past three years. Whereas the last 20 years he’d performed for fun, at bars and festivals, now he makes a living out of it, playing locally with his wife at the Golden Lion Café, Hammock Wine & Cheese and the Turtle Shack Café, among others.
“I want to keep working,” he says. “This is everything I can do. It doesn’t pay a whole lot, but whatever it pays, learn to live off it.”
Today, the captain describes himself as “deliriously happy.” He has managed to “de-stress” his life, and a lot of that is thanks to Flagler Beach, which is why so many of his songs play out like love letters to the city and its residents.
In one track, he sings about the Golden Lion, on Highway A1A. In another, which he’s currently working on for his third album — he aims to release a new record every year — the Beanery is mentioned, and every verse describes a different section of town.
He says togetherness and awareness are his two primary themes. “I like the inspiration that it gives me — the whole town, the whole atmosphere,” he said of Flagler Beach. Here, people know him. They wave to him on the street. When they come to his shows, they really listen.
“Those are my folks,” he says. “Those are my people … the ones I write the songs for. It means a lot to me that it means something to them.”
“Call of the Sea” will be released Nov. 4 at the Rum Barrel in Key West. To see Nicholson perform, visit the Turtle Shack, Oct. 13 to Oct. 16, or Hammock Wine & Cheese Oct. 16.
LISTEN
To listen to Captain Nick’s tunes, visit www.CaptNick.webs.com. To buy his records or get a free copy of his new album’s first single, “Drinkin’ Time,” email [email protected].
