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From Cullowhee to Asheville to Nashville
One of my clearest memories from more than a decade of Camp Lab and Cullowhee Valley talent shows is of a pint-sized singer in a cowboy hat, strumming a small guitar and belting out a tune while his dad and uncle backed him on fiddle and guitar.
That kid was a major show-stopper. I don’t remember much about the other two, except that they appeared very tall in their role as back-up band to 6-year-old Darren Nicholson.
Like a comet, Darren streaked through two or three shows only to disappear without a trace. Thank goodness for his mom, Joan Nicholson of Canton, who called up a couple of weeks ago to tell us where Darren’s picking these days – onstage at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashvillex, Tenn.
We caught up with Darren last Wednesday when he stopped by the Cafe on his way to see his Uncle Bud – the same Bud Cunningham who used to accompany Darren during his grade-school gigs.
So far Darren, who plays the mandolin now, has performed on the Opry more than 20 times, with the most recent being this past Tuesday (July 19).
As a member of rising bluegrass star Alecia Nugent’s band, Darren has already been across the country and toured Europe, and along the way he’s met some of his childhood idols, including Merle Haggard and George Jones.
About the biggest thrill so far, Darren said, has been doing the Opry with Jones.
“I grew up listening to him on the radio and on the Opry – Daddy listened to WSM every night,” Darren said.
Darren’s dad, Hayes Nicholson, died a few months ago, just about the time Darren’s career was taking off.
“I really miss him,” Darren said.
Hayes got his son started in music when Darren was still a toddler.
“I started going to shows with them when I was about 18 months old,” Darren said.
Though Darren started out young, his music career has had its share of starts and stops.
After moving with his mother to Asheville when he was about 9, he put aside his guitar in favor of a baseball bat and concentrated on Little League. Three years later, he “got into strings” again and began playing violin at school. Though he mastered the instrument well enough to be one of the middle-schoolers who occasionally performed with the Asheville Symphony, his classical career didn’t last.
“Orchestra work was challenging, and I enjoyed it, but I wanted to get into bluegrass,” Darren said.
He got his first mandolin when he was 16 but put it aside after less than a year.
“I looked around and everyone else was going to football games and things like that, so I quit picking again,” Darren said.
Once he graduated from Enka High, though, Darren got reacquainted with his mandolin, and destiny (in the person of banjo-picker Steve Sutton) came calling.
Sutton, a former band-mate of Marc Pruett at Asheville’s Bill Stanley’s, was playing with a Haywood County group called Hazel Creek, and he enlisted Darren.
When Hazel Creek attended a Nashville award show, Darren met Nugent, who Sutton knew from his days with bluegrass band leader Rhonda Vincent. Nugent offered Darren a job then, but he declined due to his commitment to Hazel Creek.
A year later, in June 2004, when Nugent was invited to sing on the Opry, she called Sutton and asked him to come to Nashville – and to bring a mandolin-player, if he knew one.
Darren and Sutton went over and picked while Nugent sang. The three made such a good impression, they were asked back the following week.
By that time Darren had decided to part ways with Hazel Creek and told Nugent he was ready to play in her band if the offer was still open.
“We had three shows lined up when I started, and before those three were over, we were booked for six months,” Darren said. “I’ve been on the road ever since.”
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