Franz Nicolay
From Rock Clubs to the Resistance
When I wrote about my glimpses of the Ukrainian rock scene in the book The Humorless Ladies of Border Control, many of the musicians I spoke to had been newly radicalized by the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” (or Maidan Revolution), and the Russian annexation of Crimea that followed. One was Sasha Boole, a rambunctious singer-songwriter from Chernivtsi, a city in southwestern Ukraine near the Romanian and Moldovan border. We played a show together in the provincial town of Kalush. “Everyone thinks he looks just like you,” the promoter told me. “We made up a myth that you were brothers, that you fell in love with a girl but she chose Sasha, and so you went to America.” When Sasha arrived, I saw what they meant…He wore a handlebar moustache and a bowler hat and sported a tattoo of a skeleton p...
The Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay Publishes First Novel
Autor and musician Franz Nicolay published his first novel, Someone Should Pay For Your Pain, which follows the story of singer-songwriter Rudy Pauver, who navigates resentment, family obligations, and everything else that comes with life as a cult icon in middle-age. And as a lifelong musician in various bands (he’s currently the Hold Steady’s keyboardist) Nicolay’s insight into that world comes across vividly. His first title was the nonfiction travel book, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar. As for the Hold Steady, the band just released never-before-heard live concert audio with nugs.net, including performances from thesome Brooklyn Bowl. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined...
