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Franz Nicolay | |
|---|---|
 Nicolay in 2009 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | August 27, 1977 |
| Origin | Center Sandwich, New Hampshire, U.S. |
| Genres | Punk rock, indie rock, Balkan jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, writer |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals, keyboards, banjo, guitar, accordion |
| Website | www |
Franz Nicolay (born 1977) is an American musician and writer. He is best known for playing the accordion and piano in The World/Inferno Friendship Society and keyboards in The Hold Steady from 2005 to 2010 and again from 2016 onwards. He is also notable for founding Anti-Social Music, a composer/performer collective based in New York City, and for performing in the Balkan jazz quartet Guignol.
Nicolay has worked as a producer, arranger, session musician, and collaborator with Mischief Brew, Leftöver Crack, The Dresden Dolls, The Loved Ones, and The Living End. He has performed with Frank Turner, Star Fucking Hipsters, and Against Me!
His first book The Humorless Ladies of Border Control, about DIY touring in the former Communist world, was published by The New Press in August 2016. The New York Times named it a "Season's Best Travel Book".[1] His second, the novel "Someone Should Pay For Your Pain," was called "a knockout fiction debut" in BuzzFeed and named one of Rolling Stone's "Best Music Books of 2021".[2][3] Hua Hsu, in The New Yorker, said "Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music" (2024) “might be one of the least bacchanalian books ever published about the rock-and-roll life style, but also one of the most honest.”[4] His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review Daily, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, LitHub, Longreads, The Week, VICE, and elsewhere.
He has taught at University of California, Berkeley[5] and Columbia University's MFA fiction program,[6] and is currently on faculty at Bard College.[7]
In 2012, Dying Scene named him the #1 accordionist in punk rock.
- ^ Schillinger, Liesl (29 November 2016). "Itineraries Await in the Season's Best Travel Books; The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 2017-05-12.
- ^ "42 Great Books To Read This Spring, Recommended By Our Favorite Indie Booksellers". Buzzfeed. 22 March 2021. Retrieved 2021-08-23.
- ^ "The Best Music Books of 2021". Rolling Stone.
- ^ "Gig Economy". The New Yorker. 21 October 2024. Retrieved 2024-10-23.
- ^ "Franz Nicolay". 10 January 2020.
- ^ "Franz Nicolay".
- ^ "Franz Nicolay".