Nick Vigarino

If you see smoke pouring out of the Watertown Pub on Wednesday night - don't panic. It's just Nick Vigarino playing the blues.

After the smoke clears, you'll be asking yourself what the heck is this guy doing in Anacortes? This is a man who has been named by the Washington Blues Society for best Slide Guitar, Blues Man of the Year, Entertainer of the Year, and recently, named to their Blues Hall of Fame. He has played with the likes of Bo Diddley, Long John Baldry, Lee Oscar and Jimmie Vaughn. And every Wednesday, he just saunters into the Watertown and completely rocks the room.

Vigarino's first string instrument was a rubberband stretched across a shoebox. Vibration is his medium and he is master of it. Eye-hand coordination is impressive, sure, but routed through the heart, it's downright inspiring.

No wonder he can assemble a different mix of musicians each week. He has an eclectic mix of friends, accumulated from a life devoted to music. In a way, it's like watching Gary Payton play a Sunday game of pick-up.

He's got the perfunctory blue-collar beginnings - you can buy into the Blues Man of the Year bit, but you've got to see him live to understand why they keep calling him Entertainer of the Year... - Anacortes American

Nick Vigarino puts his music first. On a perfect Northwest Sunday afternoon, Nick sacrificed sunshine and sleep to talk to “Backwater Blues.” He probably needed the sleep more than the sunshine, having walked in the door, out of breath, to answer the phone – he had just returned from the previous night’s gig in Chelan with his band, Meantown Blues. He had about one hour to pack for a trip to Europe and he had one more gig to play in Seattle that evening.

He has a reputation for being a hardworking musician. A Jet City article once detailed a Vigarino five-gig weekend that included stops in Bellingham, Port Townsend, Sun Banks in Grand Coulee and Snohomish. At one point that weekend, according to Jet City, Nick scheduled an impromptu flying lesson in order to make it to his eastern Washington gig in time.

That passion for playing comes through in his live performances. Playing at the Paragon recently, Nick set the trendy crowd to dancing with his award-winning slide guitar work and some great electric numbers. With bass (often upright bass), keyboard, harmonica, and drums, Nick’s band probably offered a little more volume than what the Paragon was accustomed to, but the crowd there seemed only too happy to have their ears filled with the music…

…Nick takes pride in his songwriting, and he should. It’s not the most traditional blues one could hear, but that’s exactly the point. Keeping the blues alive means experimenting with new and exciting ways of putting songs together, using blues tools and elements in new combinations. Nick calls his songs “homemade,” and nearly all of the material he does is his own. Nick says he plays a variety of material, but he’s focusing on “slop-jar delta funk.”

Nick explains that the history of the “slop-jar” sound started in an Arkansas recording studio that happened to be located next to a slaughterhouse. Short on drummers and drums, the recording studio folks meandered over the slaughterhouse one day looking for something to use for faked drum sounds. They found steel drums and a variety of jugs, but a cleaned out slop jar was the best fit (it was important to clean out the slop jars, since they were the barrels that held the leftovers from the day’s work).

Nick describes slop-jar delta funk as “amplified acoustic music with a contemporary bump and grind Chicago sound with funk fusing it all together.” If that looks interesting on the page, you really should hear it. It sounds fantastic….
- Backwater Blues

SLIDE GUITAR SHOW 5-24-02
by Doug Moe

Slide guitar master Nick Vigarino took to the stage what looked like a hand truck. Seems like they might have a new trick up their sleeve, this duo. The hand truck was a clever cover up for a percussion instrument, and judging by the reaction of the crowd, this gimic was a major hit. After a pair of acoustic songs including Nick's Elbow Room, the drummer took to a more traditional drum kit and the bass man reappeared. With Meantown Blues intact and onstage, Nick took to dismantling what was left of all sensibility with the skill of a surgeon and the impact of a wrecking ball. We were promised that this guy smoked, but even that's putting things lightly. Before all was said and done, Nick made his way through the crowd, playing slide with everything he got his hands on. Beer glasses, salt shakers, a cellular phone, even a shoe from one of the ladies in attendance. With this guy, anything goes! The man blew everyone away and we showed our appreciation with thundering applause. It was already after 2 a.m., but the boys wanted to squeeze in one more. If you weren't there, you missed one hell of a show! - Washington Blues Society

SLIDE GUITAR SHOW 5-24-02
by Doug Moe

Slide guitar master Nick Vigarino took to the stage what looked like a hand truck. Seems like they might have a new trick up their sleeve, this duo. The hand truck was a clever cover up for a percussion instrument, and judging by the reaction of the crowd, this gimic was a major hit. After a pair of acoustic songs including Nick's Elbow Room, the drummer took to a more traditional drum kit and the bass man reappeared. With Meantown Blues intact and onstage, Nick took to dismantling what was left of all sensibility with the skill of a surgeon and the impact of a wrecking ball. We were promised that this guy smoked, but even that's putting things lightly. Before all was said and done, Nick made his way through the crowd, playing slide with everything he got his hands on. Beer glasses, salt shakers, a cellular phone, even a shoe from one of the ladies in attendance. With this guy, anything goes! The man blew everyone away and we showed our appreciation with thundering applause. It was already after 2 a.m., but the boys wanted to squeeze in one more. If you weren't there, you missed one hell of a show! - Washington Blues Society