JARED JAMES
The fiery fingerstylist testifies to his blues devotion with every note.
BY RICHARD BIENSTOCK
HAILINGFROM WAUKESHA, Wisconsin — the home of Les Paul — Jared James Nichols has spent the past few years reigniting the heavy blues-rock fires, strangling his Les Paul into pick-less submission with some of the most incendiary fingerstyle licks in modern blues. “You have to commit and you have to mean every damn note you play,” he says.
What led you to the blues?
I came into it through the classic-rock door. I remember being a kid and hearing Zeppelin and Sabbath, and I would hear these licks and the guitar sound and I didn’t know what it was or where it came from. And then when I started to play guitar, I was 15 and someone showed me a VHS tape of Stevie Ray Vaughan — it was Live at the El Mocambo — and I saw a force of nature. I had no idea what I was watching, but it hit me upside the head. I was like, “I want to do that.”