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Ricky Nye
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When you talk to local pianist Ricky Nye about his long, storied career playing music, you talk about moments. Nye, 42, has an astonishing memory of the various twists and turns his career has taken. But when he talks about specific, life-changing moments, the memories are so vivid, it's like they happened yesterday.
For example, the moment he knew he'd be a musician for the rest of his life? Eight years old. Here in Cincinnati. His father and uncles played in a band together and little Ricky wanted to see what Pops was up to.
"My mom took me to watch them practice one night and it was all over," Nye says. "It was one of those things that you remember, you have really vivid memories. I'm mean, I knew right then. I was gone. From there I knew I was going to play."
Nye currently gigs around town as a solo act and with his two bands -- the upbeat Red Hots and the trio-based Swingin' Mudbugs -- exhibiting a New Orleans boogie piano style so impressive it has led to invitations to international festivals in France and Belgium this fall. But there's a profound diversity in Nye's past and even present that makes it hard to pinpoint Ricky Nye as anything more specific than a musician. The man simply loves to play.
After starting on accordion (and soon realizing it "wasn't cool"), Nye tinkered around the family piano for a few years. But, oddly enough (or perhaps not so, considering the New Orleans-style playing's percussive nature), Nye picked up the drums and stuck with them through high school. Still, he never stopped playing keys, inspired listening to his father's Stax and Atlantic sides. The crucial "first record ever bought"? A greatest hits collection from hard boppin', Soul/Jazz organist Jimmy Smith.
After high school, Nye headed for Boston's Berklee School of Music, where he chose piano over percussion as his main instrument. Going for a composition degree, Nye finished three years worth of classes in two years and found himself suffering from severe burnout.
"I'm writing all of this 20th-century Classical music and it's all just 'math' oriented," Nye recalls. "I was walking in front of cars; I was like a zombie. I told my folks that I really wanted to take a semester off because I was really getting whacko. So I did, and I never went back."
Nye stayed on the East Coast for a couple of years, working the bar scene, playing all kinds of music and auditioning for bands in New York (including David Johansen's). Around this time, Nye's brother started telling him about a cool band back in Cincinnati called The Raisins.
"I'd been really thinking in my mind about what kind of band would I want to be in," Nye says, professing a big influence from Todd Rundgren around this time. "What would it be like and all this stuff. I had come back to Cincinnati to visit in '78 and I saw The Raisins and I was just like, 'That's the band. That's the band in my mind.'"
"They were just a heavy, heavy band. And they were all little kids. So talented it was scary."
Nye soon moved back and eventually joined the soon-to-be local Pop/Rock icons. While the band struggled for a while to get gigs, Nye began to play with Raisin drummer Bam Powell in some Roots/Country side-projects to make rent (including an early incarnation of Stagger Lee). The Raisins released their legendary self-titled debut in '83 and the hit single "Fear is Never Boring" meant no more scraping for gigs. But the Roots bug had bit Nye.
As The Raisins began moving in different directions musically, they eventually split in '85. Nye took on various projects to keep working, but eventually, a call to fill in at a gig with local Blues guitarist Big Ed Thompson led to a three-year stint in Big Ed's band, another revelatory experience.
"That was the most life-changing experience I ever had," Nye says. "He had such a great impact and influence on me -- the way he played, the way he ran the band, the way he ran his show, the kind of person he was. I learned so much just from being with him."
Nye next went on to do gig work with Robin Lacy (back on the accordion!) and The Goshorn Brothers, but then a friend and fellow pianist turned him on to his current fascination.
"I hadn't been into New Orleans music really at all, and (a fellow pianist from New Orleans) had seen me play and she said, 'Where'd you get your New Orleans stuff from?,'" he recalls. "And I was, like, 'I don't know.' And she said I did stuff that sounded like Booker and I'm like, 'Who's Booker?' So the next day, she gave me tapes of three albums and that was it, it was all over."
That was about five years ago, and today (though he may not admit it) Nye has all but mastered the style. His Piano is Fun CD is a rollicking and, yes, fun journey into the genre. But even though Nye has discovered what might seem like his "true calling" now, it's still not safe to limit your expectations of him.
Nye still sits in with bands of all styles, having recorded on albums by local artists like Tracy Walker, The Simpletons and Matt DeCoster. He's also been known to gig around town as his drag alter-ego Vicki D'Salle, playing what he calls "nasty Blues" at various event and venues. And recently he did a gig in Atlanta, playing keys with a Glam Rock group at a Southern presentation of the popular L.A. club night Club Make Up.
Just try to stereotype Nye as your average working Blues/R&B musician. It simply (and blissfully) can't be done.
RICKY NYE performs the Main City Bar this Saturday with the Red Hots.
