“Just being in motion and seeing the scenery is stirring… it quickens certain emotions and brings things to light that maybe you weren’t thinking about in your day to day. It’s like hearing your own heartbeat.”

For Portland songwriter J. Nicolás, the open road isn’t the fast-paced, monotonous tapestry seen so often in the road-weary artist. Instead, it is a quiet place, a deliberate place, one that offers J. Nicolás the space to understand himself and his world around him with clarity. Wild Oak, which he wrote largely while behind the steering wheel, feels like late night driving: an effortless Folk-Americana soundtrack for the final hours of a day. Laden with rich harmonies and a band that carries along the intuitive lyrics with ease, the record holds a sense of peace even while navigating the memory of heartbreak, echoing J. Nicolás’ own healing process.

“There’s a lot of healing in movement. Not running away from, but moving through the world, seeing other places and things and getting a better perspective on yourself.”

Indeed, J. Nicolás doesn’t use the road solely as backdrop for his emotional reflection, but instead weaves memory with topography until they become a part of one another, and exhales them in the same breath. Wild Oak serves as a faithful portrait of this process.

In the poignant “Endless Autumn,” J. Nicolás’ past relationships surface all around him as he journeys to New York City in the middle of a winter storm. The remembered imagery of bygone friends and lovers merge with the scenery, folding into one another as he travels. “And all along an east born wind was stretching west across the Catskills as / I returned to you and that city in the sky / And the endless autumn in your eyes.” J. Nicolás, who took years to complete the song, renders the characters from his past with an immense tenderness that is indicative of the way he forms connections. “I don't have many people in my life,” says J. Nicolás, who describes himself as extremely introverted. “So when I do have people that are close to me, they're really close to me.”

J. Nicolás spent much of the last two decades playing in bands in Portland, OR, and touring across the country with various projects before recording his debut full-length Wild Oak in the early part of 2021. The record was tracked to one inch tape at Singing Sands in Portland and Capricorn Studios in San Diego, CA, and features Sydney Nash on piano and keys, Allen Hunter (The Eels) on bass, Joe Mengis (The Eels) on drums, Steely Pete on pedal steel, and Ezza Rose on harmonies. It was engineered and mixed by Tobias Berblinger.