CC Nichols

This past weekend, I had the privilege of opening for Streamline Music at The River House in Capon Bridge, WV. It was a truly special night—a sold-out crowd, an incredible listening atmosphere, and a lot of love for live music.

One of the highlights for me was having my wife, Julie, join me on stage for two songs. There’s something magical about sharing music with someone you love, and I think the audience felt that energy too. The River House is such a welcoming and intimate venue, and I deeply connect with their mission:

💫 "To create a welcoming space where participation in the Arts inspires deep community connections and nourishes the lives of individuals and families."

It’s venues like this that make playing live music so fulfilling, and I really hope to be back there again soon. If you ever get the chance, go support this incredible space! Click on the picture to see a clip from that evening.

In the meantime, I’ve got some great shows coming up, including stops in Cumberland, Thomas, and Accident, MD. And there’s a special June 14 event in the works that I’ll be announcing soon—stay tuned!

Thanks for being on this journey with me. See you at a show! 🎶

🎶 Updated Live Music Schedule 🎶

🎸 March 1, 2025 – 1:00 PM
📍 Azads of Cumberland at The Tilly Gallery – Cumberland, MD

🎸 March 15, 2025 – 7:00 PM
📍 Dig Deep Brewery – Cumberland, MD

🎸 April 12, 2025 – 6:00 PM
📍 Tie One On Tap House – Thomas, WV

🎸 June 1, 2025 – 1:00 PM
📍 Brewery and the Beast – Accident, MD

🎸 June 14, 2025 – TBA
📍 (More details are coming soon!)

🎸 June 28, 2025 – 7:00 PM
📍 Dig Deep Brewery – Cumberland, MD

(Note: The March 8 Cornucopia Café show has been postponed, with a new date TBD.)

Mule Skinner Blues: The Punk Rock of Its Day and My Favorite Performance Song

If there’s one song that encapsulates the raw energy, tradition, and musical challenge of roots music, it’s Mule Skinner Blues. For me, it’s been more than just a classic—it’s been a teacher, a test of resilience, and now, one of my favorite songs to perform live.

A Little History: Jimmie Rodgers to Bill Monroe and Beyond

Mule Skinner Blues has a storied past that stretches back to its early roots in country music. The song, originally titled “Blue Yodel No. 8”, was first recorded by Jimmie Rodgers in 1930. Known as the “Father of Country Music,” Rodgers infused his signature yodeling style into the song, creating a template that would inspire generations of artists.

Fast forward to 1940, and Bill Monroe—the “Father of Bluegrass”—reimagined Mule Skinner Blues into something altogether different. Monroe’s version was nothing short of revolutionary. At a time when country and folk music leaned heavily on sentimental ballads and polished harmonies, Monroe’s take on the song was a jolt of raw energy.

With only two chords and a whole lot of yelling, Monroe’s version broke all the rules. In a way, it was the punk rock of its day—loud, brash, and unapologetically different. Performing something so raw and aggressive was a bold risk, especially given the more polished tenor of popular music in the 1940s. Monroe didn’t just perform Mule Skinner Blues—he attacked it, creating something primal, rebellious, and exciting that laid the groundwork for bluegrass as we know it today.

Other artists have carried the torch for Mule Skinner Blues, leaving their own mark:

• Dolly Parton gave it a fresh life in 1970, with her unmistakable vocals and charisma. Her version became a hit, reaching #3 on the Billboard Country charts. Dolly’s playful yodeling added joy and lightheartedness to the song.
• More recently, various bluegrass and Americana musicians have performed the song, but for me, no one captures its fire quite like Bill Monroe.

My Journey with Mule Skinner Blues

For a long time, this song felt like a mountain I wasn’t sure I could climb. The first time I attempted it, I felt like a fool trying to hold those long, high yodeling notes. I had the tools—thanks to the incredible Megan Jean (frontwoman for the great band Megan Jean’s Secret Family). Megan gave me the vocal techniques and confidence to approach challenging songs but let me tell you: Mule Skinner Blues pushed me to my limits. And I still have some work to do, but man am I ever having fun with it.

I spent hours learning how to shape my breath, control my tone, and sustain those yodels without wavering. At times, it felt impossible. But as Megan taught me, the tools don’t work unless you keep working at them—and so I did. Slowly but surely, I became more comfortable. I stopped worrying about sounding foolish and started having fun.

Now, when I perform Mule Skinner Blues, I feel a kind of freedom I didn’t expect. There’s nothing like the energy of that song: it’s wild, high-stakes, and deeply rewarding. It challenges me every time I play it, and I love that.

Why This Song Matters

Mule Skinner Blues is more than a song to me—it’s a testament to the power of pushing past discomfort. Whether it’s Jimmie Rodgers’ pioneering yodel, Bill Monroe’s bluegrass fire, or Dolly Parton’s playful take, this song represents the spirit of roots music: tradition, challenge, and joy.

Performing it has taught me to embrace the work, the struggle, and the sound of my own voice. It’s a reminder that sometimes the rawest, simplest songs can be the most powerful.

Where to Hear It

If you haven’t heard my take on Mule Skinner Blues yet, I just shared a live clip on Instagram and TikTok—check it out and let me know what you think! Does this classic hit you the way it hits me? Who’s your favorite artist to perform it?

And if you haven’t yet, start with Bill Monroe’s version—it’ll light a fire under you.

What classic roots song challenges you the most—or moves you the deepest? I’d love to hear about it. Share it in the comments or tag me on Instagram!

Another new song out today!

I'm releasing my sixth single this year. Annalee is the story of one woman's life, her family, and her savior. It's my grandmother's story. There are a lot of ways to grieve the passing of those we love. A couple years ago, I lost two grandmothers within seven days of each other. They were both in the nineties and had very interesting lives. Not long after their passing, I sat down and wrote a song about each of them. This one, Annalee, has a Christian theme to it. Even for my non-Christian friends, I hope you can see the importance of Annalee's faith to the core of who she was. 

Big props to my collaborating/producing friend, Ben Townsend. Ben actually threw down a cello performance on this track. Parker Schrecengost performed drums and William Bower leant his always spot on a tactful lead guitar to the effort. I absolutely love how this song builds to a wonderful peak during the last section. Parker's drums build and bring us to that peak. 

Click on the picture below to see the official music video for the song.

This will be my last single for a while. I have four more songs currently in production. One of them is about my other grandmother, “Irene”. Once those four songs are completed, I will be rolling them along with the six I have already released into a complete album. I'm hoping to have that done by the end of the year.

In the meantime, please keep listening to my stuff and share it with others. I will also be performing out and about. So come and check that out too. Some dates should be posted on the website soon.

Thanks for reading, listening, and sharing.

I'm continuing my goal of one song a month for at least six months, here's the fifth installment. Wasting Time is a song about something we all do from time to time…waste a little bit of time. It's still summer and I think this song fits the summer vibe. Check it out on my website (ccnicholsmusic.com) or wherever you stream your music (Spotify and Apple).

As with all my songs, I made a video for it. This one has a group of family and friends wasting time in the mountains of West Virginia at Seneca Rocks, Black Watter Falls State Park, and the towns of Davis and Thomas. Check it out by clicking on the picture below.

A couple things I'd like to point out about the musicians on this song. As always, Ben Townsend's thumbprint is all over this tune…most notably the fiddle and production. He really brings out the fun of this song. Bill Bower's guitar just rocks this tune. He is such a talented guitarist. And of course there's Parker Schrecengost on drums…he is an outstanding percussionist. I caught an indie rock show at Clatter Cafe in Frostburg, MD last Friday. Bill and Parker performed as part of the group Mountain Pom and the Storm. Such a great show. It was kinda like Lisa Loeb meets Nirvana. Mountain Pom really brings a great vibe and energy to her performances.

I hope you are enjoying my songs. I'm having a blast with the whole thing. If you think someone else would like it, please share my website with them: ccnicholsmusic.com.  And have them sign up to my email list!

THANKS for reading this email and listening to my stuff.

CC Nichols

I'm four songs into all the songs I want to release. It's been great and there's been a couple surprises/learnings.

1. My name. Yeah, I've had a few name changes over the years.

People from my youth call me Chad. People from my military days call me Nick (short for Nichols), and people from my adult and professional life call me Chris. With all the Chris and Chad Nichols' producing music, I chose CC Nichols as the name to release music under. I really don't know who the hell I am I guess? I just know I don't want to be confused with other people. Unfortunately, the name changes not only confuse me but also confuses all my current and future friends. I adjusted all my online accounts to CC to help keep things straight. But please continue to call me whatever you want. I'll continue to answer to my many names.

2. I tried to use TikTok, Instagram, and other social media outlets to promote each song's release. Turns out I HATE this. Making the content for each social media post can be fun sometimes. However, all the music promotion experts say you need to post something daily or at least three times a week. This is exhausting and not fun. I find myself producing videos that often aren't very good, continually checking my phone to see how many “views” each post gets and ignoring the actual joy of playing music. I'll still use social media here and there, but I'm COMPLETELY done following the “experts” advice. I'm gonna follow my own path. Let's see where that leads. I do enjoy making music videos. It's incredibly fun to include others in the production of the videos. So, you can expect that to continue.

3. The positive reception to each release has been wonderful. Coming up with an idea for a song is one thing. Working the idea into an actual song is something else. Collaborating with a team to build that song into something worthy of publication is…well…a lot of work. Finally, sharing that artistic product with the world is both exciting and intimidating. Some music “professionals” have come back with less than great reviews of my vocal talents. I expected that. I'm not trying to be Freddy Mercury or George Jones.

And I deliberately choose to not go too deep with the autotune craze of modern music production. I simply have some stories to tell. They may be slightly off key but it's the real me and I think the stories are resonating with the right people.

UPCOMING STUFF

My next release, “Wasting Time”, comes out on August 7th. It's another fun/introspective tune about…well…wasting time. Sign up to my email list HERE to receive updates about this release and other stuff.

If you are enjoying my music, please share it with your friends. Send them this blog post, direct them to my website, or send them to whatever outlet you use to listen to music. Here's a couple links to the big streaming services:  

Spotify      Apple Music     

Thanks for reading this and listening to my stuff!

CC Nichols

Have you ever just screwed up and then screwed up again and followed that up with another screw up? Well, I have…so I wrote a song about it. I Think I Got This Wrong is a rather humorous autobiographical take on falling down. It's out now on all the streaming platforms. 

Spotify     Apple     YouTube     Amazon    SoundCloud     BandCamp

You can also download it for free on my website.

Here's a video I made during a beach trip with my extended family. Big thanks to all my Caporale family members for providing a lot of material for a fun video. Hope you enjoy it. Click on the picture below to see the video.

If you haven't done so already, please head over to my website and sign up for my mailing list. It keeps you up to date on all my releases and other cool stuff. I only send about two emails a month so you don't have to worry about me flooding your inbox.

I'm also on all the streaming platforms. Make sure you follow me wherever you get your music fix and add me to your playlists.

Spotify     Apple     YouTube     Amazon    SoundCloud     BandCamp

Lastly, please share any and all of this with your friends if it's something you think they will like. They may like it too and just not know about it yet.

Hell On The Potomac is about Jason Schaeffer and Todd Shipley’s death and part of the inspiration of the song is rooted deep in the WV fiddle music lore spanning back to the civil war. 

Israel Welch, born in 1911, was a fiddler from rural Mineral County (the same county Jason and Todd lived in and the place I call home). Like all amazing fiddlers, Israel probably knew how to play every fiddle song there is three different ways. And like all amazing fiddlers he had his favorites. His album “Tearin’ Down the Laurel” has twenty-five of his favorites. Among those twenty-five is Hell On The Potomac. The notes for that specific song say “Learned from Mosby Rogers. This is probably of Civil War origin.” I’ve listened to this song a thousand times over the last several decades.

Sitting outside staring at the Potomac River during the height of the 2020 pandemic, my mind wondered back to Jason and Todd’s death. Then I thought of Israel’s fiddle tune. This tune doesn’t have any lyrics. If it ever did, they are lost to history. All that remains is a wonderful melody of Appalachian notes. Anyhow, I felt inspired. I grabbed my guitar and wrote the chorus and first verse of my Hell On The Potomac. Over the next year, I came up with 6 more verses. The melody in my version in no way resembles Israel’s song. But man, am I ever thankful for Israel’s inspiration. 

Then in 2021, I was taking some fiddle lessons from Ben Townsend. I mentioned a few songs I had written and shared my Hell On The Potomac with him. Ben is a WV fiddle historian and plays outstanding versions of Israel’s songs. I was surprised and humbled by how much Ben liked my song. We began working on the song together. Ben helped cut it down to four verses to keep the story tight and added a lot of other details that really made the song what it is today. It was sooooo much fun to collaborate with him. Candidly, it was also a little intimidating. Ben is just an outstanding multi-instrumentalist, producer, and performer. To his ever-living credit, he made me feel completely worthy of working with him. I am forever grateful for this outstanding act of grace. Click on the picture below to see Ben playing Israel's Hell On The Potomac.

Then we took the song into the studio, added a couple professional touches from Parker Schrecengost’s drums and William Bower’s lead guitar. Ben’s banjo and fiddle really help the song pop and keep it steeped in the Appalachian tradition. Although the song does not have Israel’s melody, it was important to us that it highlighted the instruments that Israel played.

So that’s the back story to making the song. It may be the most important piece of art I will ever be part of creating. It encompasses so much of who I am. My love of traditional music, collaboration with friends who stretch me out of my comfort zone, giving voice to the area I am from and the people I love, and honoring two dear friends who tragically died entirely too early.

Please check the song out wherever you stream your music. Here's a link to it on Spotify.

Check out the music video I made on YouTube.

Sign up for my mailing list to stay up to date on all things I got going on.

Please share this song with all your friends. I want the entire world to know about Jason, Todd, and the town of Ridgeley

Hell On The Potomac is out TODAY!!!

This song, like all my songs, was made with Ben Townsend. I’ll talk more about Ben in future posts but for right now, I want to acknowledge that none of these songs would have made it out of my living room without his significant contribution to them. The guy is just great!

As for Hell On The Potomac, it’s the story of Jason Scheaffer and Todd Shipley’s tragic death at the age of 13 in 1986. It's about them, their families, their classmates, the community of Ridgeley, WV, pop culture for 8^th graders in 1986, our teachers, the lessons of death, the never-ending grief of a tragedy, and on and on. There has rarely been a week in my entire life that I haven’t thought about Jason and Todd. I know all my middle school classmates would say the same. Hell On The Potomac is about all of us that experienced that tragedy. I pray that this song can tell at least part of OUR story!

Checkout the video and song right here on my website and sign up to receive news about my music in general. You can also find Hell On The Potomac on your favorite streaming service. Here are a couple links to some popular streaming services:

Spotify    Apple Music    YouTube    Soundcloud    Bandcamp

If you like the song and video, please share both with your friends and post them on social media. I want everyone to know about this story.

I was in the produce section of Walmart a while ago when I heard this couple talking about giving their dogs grapes. There are few things in this world that I love more than dogs. And I know that chocolate, grapes, and raisins will kill a dog. So I but in to say “Ya know, grapes will kill a dog. It gives them kidney failure.” 

Well, the female of the couple first gave me a toes to nose eye of complete disgust. Then she began to inform me how she hates when strangers but into her business. Her male partner accented her statement with “yeah.” She continued on about how people should just keep to themselves. He said “yeah.” She told me I have no right telling them how to feed their dog. He said “yeah.” It continued like this until everyone in the produce section knew to never but into this couples’ business even if you are trying to save their dogs lives.

I stood there, took the verbal lashing, tried to apologize, and explained I was only trying to protect their dog. They were having none of it. I’ve seen a lot of scenes at the Walmart. Somehow, I managed to become the scene. I quickly surmised that if one is the scene at the Walmart, no matter if you are right or wrong, you have lost. So, I tucked my tail between my legs and went on my defeated Walmart shopping way. By the time I got to the check out line, I had the first verse of Angry Stranger fully written in my head:

I made a stranger angry

I did things I ought not have done

Trying to walk that thin line

Somewhere between right and wrong

This is just one example of how things often blow up on me when trying to do the right thing. I’m sure I’m not alone with that experience. As a friend recently pointed out, being human is messy.

Hope you all are enjoying the song. I plan on releasing the official music video for Angry Stranger soon. Here's a little bit of a still picture preview:

If you haven’t done so already:

Sign up on my email list to receive updates. 

Share Angry Stranger with your friends.

Share your own Angry Stranger story…I would love to see some new pics and hear some stories.