The Hot Nut Riveters

From the diabolical mind of Guy Forsyth, the man who brought you the famous (some would say infamous) Asylum Street Spankers, and the somewhat less inventively named but no less infamous Guy Forsyth Band, we proudly present The Hot Nut Riveters - Texas’s Original Recession Era String Band. Believe it or not, it was over twenty years ago when Guy Forsyth, still wet behind the ears and entirely oblivious to just how crazy an idea it was, started a band who played all acoustic instruments and specialized in a strange and heady homebrew of genre and influences, and promptly began mining the deep, rich veins of American traditional and popular music forms. Call it traditional bluespop folk countrygrass. Wait, no. Call it traditional alt-bluespop folk countrygrass. Though his career has taken him down varied paths, including successful forays into the blues and, most recently, Americana, his love for that “old time” music and his drive to proselytize about it to whomever would listen has never been stronger. “You can hear snatches of this music in songs on every album I’ve ever recorded. There is just something about it that is in my blood, and every now and then it just boils over and forces itself out - usually in just a song, or maybe two. This time, though, I noticed all the talent around me and it came bubbling out as this band, The Hot Nut Riveters - an all-star cast of the best players for their position that I could run down and capture and force to play.” Guitar bully Matt Smith agrees. “Writing these songs, working out the arrangements, recording - you name it, and this group of players knocks it out of the park. These guys made recording Moustashe Girl so much fun. It’s just great to be surrounded by such good players who all share Guy’s vision,” Matt Smith earned his nickname “Guitar Bully” over the past two decade leading guitar workshops from Connecticut to Los Angeles; in his role as a senior instructor for the National Guitar Workshop; and as a record producer at his studio Lost Oasis, where he has recorded the likes of Del Castillo, Soul-Track Mind and, not coincidentally, Guy Forsyth’s last studio record “The Freedom To Fail”, and has a list of endorsements that would make Eric Clapton blush. Matt finds the diverse talents of the Riveters a main selling point. “The Riveters have a ringer at every position, and not just as players. All these Riveters can sing. They can write. They can pick up whatever instrument is at hand and go to town. Heck, sometimes they aren’t even picking up instruments,” Matt says, probably referring to the saw Guy Forsyth sometimes plays. “But my favorite Riveter, by far, is Nevada. He’s just so COOL! He’s the Singing Take-A-Break Man, after all.” Vocalist and guitarist Nevada Newman, the “Singing Take-A-Break Man”, is known most recently for his work with the Spankers with whom he toured relentlessly through just about every major city in the United States, Europe and even Japan. Nevada originally joined the Spankers as a guitarist, but he gradually worked his way up to front-man and several of his tunes are featured on Spanker releases. “Once it became clear that we were going to head down this rabbit-hole, Nevada was one of my first calls,” Guy points out. “He brings a certain...authenticity to everything he does, and we wanted that in this band. Shortly thereafter, we had to find a man who could hold down the front wheels on this dragster - our tailfin. And that absolutely had to be Kris Wade, a younger bass player I met while producing his band Ghosts Along The Brazos. Cute kid - and the best thing? He does whatever I tell him to do.” Stand-up bassist and vocalist Kristopher Wade does not, as some would have you believe, do everything anyone tells him to do – though he is the final member of the four-man core that the rest of the Riveters universe is coalesced around. Like at least two generations of musicians before him, Houston-native Kristopher Wade felt the magnetic pull of Austin in 2005, promptly saw his first upright bass at Jo’s Coffee on South Congress and has since shared the stage with an assortment of Texas’ A-List, including fiddle legend Johnny Gimble and Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson. As a songwriter his songs have been sung by Johnny’s granddaughter Emily Gimble, Katie Holmes (of Asleep at the Wheel), Sarah Sharp and the Jitterbug Vipers, Ghosts Along the Brazos and, most recently and not coincidentally, Guy Forsyth, and in what is clearly his most impressive accomplishment, Lou Diamond Phillips watched other folks dancing to one of his tunes in an episode of A&E’s popular series, “Longmire.” That’s one of Lou’s most impressive accomplishments – Kristopher has done plenty of things more impressive than that. “My first years in Austin were spent soaking up all of the amazing talents of not only folks around my age who dug acoustic music, but by the amazing generation of musicians who had been around when Austin was still a small town. Folks who were as skilled as they were down to earth, some of whom had played with Stevie Ray, Champ Hood or Willie. Among my greatest mentors in town was a fellow bassist, not to mention my preferred salesman at the violin shop, Mark Rubin. I remember that the first time someone I had never met called me to play a gig was because of Mark’s recommendation. That’s what a place like Austin is all about and I never forgot that.” String-slinger Mark Rubin (guitar/banjo), vocalist and percussionist Albanie Falleta and accordionist and horn player Oliver Steck round out the current Hot Nut Riveters line-up as immortalized on their brand new album “Moustashe Girl”, and one or more of them can likely be found touring with the band. “I didn’t want to be too precious about ‘the band’ with the Riveters,” Guy says. “At the risk of quoting Woody Guthrie, it’s a communal thing. Music is a communal thing. It’s tribal - and the Riveters are a tribe, and we aren’t exclusionary. We are inclusionary: an ever-expanding blob of good times, great music and ukeleles, and we are hoping to get the local players up with us when we tour - eventually we expect everyone to be in the band. Which begs the question who then will be left to come to the shows - but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there! Right now we’re lucky to have drafted the likes of Mark Rubin to come and play!” Mark Rubin has toured the world, and been banned from a significant portion of it, as a founding member of alt-bluegrass outfit Bad Livers, and more recently could be found wandering across Eastern Europe playing traditional regional music as well as all flavors of Klezmer music. An Austin resident for over twenty years, Mark has recently relocated to his home away from home, the great cultural melting pot of New Orleans, where he plays banjo, guitar, bass and tuba with a number of great local outfits, all the while dodging various CIA and homeland security agents. “I’ve always prided myself on participating in a diversity of projects,” says Mark. “So I was pretty excited to be invited by Guy into the Riveters here at their genesis. It is a great honor - and a great responsibility, and about twelve tons of fun, all rolled up and tied together with broken guitar strings, and rolling across the country in a dirty van with a bunch of musicians is a pretty good way to dodge weasel-faced government men, irate bookies, angry husbands and the like. The Riveters are the perfect cover!”. New Orleans is also home to another Riveter, 24 year old wunderkind Albanie Falletta, who can be seen “couché avec la moustache” on the back of the new Riveters album. A native of Wimberley, Texas (just outside of Austin), Albanie’s formative years were spent singing and playing around Austin before moving to New Orleans in 2013 and she will be joining the band on the upcoming maiden voyage of the USS Riveter. “I absolutely can’t wait to get out there into the world and tour with this band. If you ever catch me with a stupid look on my face, it’s just amazement that I find myself playing with these guys. And then to get to go out on the road and share this thing, this music that we’re creating - that’s priceless to me!” Oliver Steck, the seventh and final Riveter you will meet here, couldn’t possibly be less interested in being on the road: “Me? Go on the road with the Hot Nut Riveters? Let me tell you something: the road ain’t nothing but dirty socks, stinky butts and someone else’s shoes next to your bed. No. Thank. You.” Besides being an accomplished accordionist, a heralded trumpeter and an improvisational actor of no small skill, Ollie is also a clown-college graduate, so it is maybe not surprising that he prefers to spend his time touring around the world with Bob Schneider. Recession Era Music, 365 days a year. It's dirty music from a much more innocent time.