Nicolette’s voice and soul will live forever in my heart. She brought her love and spirit every time she sang with me or anyone else. When Ben Keith called her the best harmony singer he had ever heard, he was right. Nicolette loved to sing! Singing along with me once she said she could follow my voice anywhere it went.

Nicolette.

She once told me her friends would go with her on gravel roads, bumpy ones, in an old truck and “sing like Neil Young”, referring to my shaky vibrato and laughing as they flew down the bumpy road.

Today, as we are completing our long lost recording done long ago at the Nashville Musician’s Union Hall with the ‘Gone with the Wind Orchestra,’ I feel her soul, almost as never before. We never listened to this tape until just the other day, when we found it in the archive - and it’s a magical simple two track recording of about thirty musicians playing in the Union Hall, Karl Himmel, Ben Keith, Spooner Oldham, Tim Drummond and so many more, rehearsing for a birthday show in Miami I had decided to do on a lark. So on my birthday in 1977 we flew to Miami from Nashville and played that free outdoor show, then flew back. Just the day before, we had rehearsed and this was the tape.

The Volume Dealers, Niko Bolas and myself, brought all the life in that old tape right back to my ears and heart! I had just plugged in my new MOJO DAC to my computer, set it up with Phil Baker, and played the first song as it arrived from Niko. I was dancing and smiling wildly with my Koss phones on as Daryl and I were in the living room in front of the fire. That moment was a musical highlight in my whole life. It sounded so good!

Now when I think of Nicolette, I am so happy to have this, the best sounding record of our music together ever! And it was just sitting there for years, waiting for this moment to come. Now it can take its place, living in NYA Volume 3 of the music in the Archives. What a gift we have been given and will soon be sharing with you. Ten songs! It makes me so happy!
ny 2021