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The Nick has been around for a long time. For perspective, I have been an agent in the music business for over 30 years now and The Nick was one of the first clubs that I ever sent a band to. See, I was booking a tour for my own band back in 1990 or so and we were taking a band on tour with us; a little band from from out west that went on to sell a few million records (actually about 30 million to be precise). I was a 19 year old kid with little to no experience booking tours, though I spent my days at a club in Houston, TX fielding calls from bands wanting to book themselves at our little watering hole. I figured, how hard could it be?

My band had a bit of a following in Texas and this band from California wanted to play some shows with us in Texas so I suggested we do just that and maybe even another week or two of shows throughout the Southeast. They were up for it. Where to start? 

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Working at the club helped, because we had a subscription to Pollstar and Performance Magazines, literally the Bibles of the music industry at that time and they both provided directories of venues across the United States, much like the incredible directories you will find here on MusicBizHub starting January of 2021 (a subtle hint of things to come). I remember sitting down with a pencil and writing down the cities we should play in each state, based solely on my very limited knowledge of those States from Geography classes and which cities in them had the most people. I opened up the directory and, since the directory was in alphabetical order, the first page was Alabama. There were over 50 venues listed in the directory for Alabama. Where to start? 

On the advice of my boss, the owner of the venue I handled the local booking for, I looked at the capacities of each venue and basically crossed off the clubs over 300 capacity as I knew we had literally ZERO following and didnt want to be expected to fill them. Well, that narrowed my choices to about twenty and I called them all. There was no email in those days, no social media, no nothing. You picked up the phone and cold-called. The first one that actually took my call and didn't turn me down right away, was this little club in Birmingham called The Nick. I honestly cannot remember if the guy who I spoke to was Dan Nolen, the venue's current owner or not, but I do remember that the person who I spoke to grilled me about my history in the market. History? What's that?

Long story short, after a bit of back and forth, I convinced him to give us a shot, one club booker to another and all that. We agreed to play for a percentage of the door and some free drinks and a little food if he was "feeling it". I had no idea what to expect but we did our best to tell the three friends we knew in Birmingham Alabama (a local band who had played with us in Texas) about the show and they told some of their friends, and so on. They would have played with us, but their drummer was out of town. Suffice to say, I think we ended up playing for about 15 people, made enough for a few beers more than the few we were comped and slept in the van that night. Another fun night on the road! All of that though to say, he gave us a shot when not a single other venue in the State of Alabama would, and now, almost 30 years later, I still send shows to The Nick when it makes sense, and the bands I represent now draw a LOT more than 15 people, hell a lot more than 150 people even. 

The venue promoted the show, as best they could for trying to get people to come see a band they had never heard of in the time before internet, and treated us nicely. If you're looking for a cool little rock club in Birmingham, Alabama, give Dan a shout. They typically book Rock, Punk, Americana, Bluegrass, Soul, Indie, Acoustic, Singer/Songwriters, Metal, Hardcore, Emo, Screamo, Hardcore, Country, Alt-Country, Rockabilly, Psychobilly and more. Most genres work at the Nick quite well. The photo above pretty much tells you about what to expect in the way of ambiance.