NATIONAL GUITAR is a Paul Simon tribute band featuring Pacific Northwest all stars musicians from Polecat, Petty or Not, Skillethead, and the Jenner Fox Band. The ensemble was formed on a fateful election night when they found themselves listening to “American Tune” and discovered a mutual reverence for Paul Simon. National Guitar performs a range of Simon’s music from Garfunkle to Graceland and everywhere in between. Come prepared to sing along, groove, and celebrate some of the finest music from a true American original.
The five piece band features piano, organ, electric guitar, bass, dobro, acoustic guitar, and layered vocal harmony. With decades of arranging and touring under their belts, National Guitar brings new life to Simon’s beloved catalog.
Friday, January 12 | 7:30 PM
Tickets available:
WICA Star: $45
Standard: $30
by request to the box office: $20
Youth 18 and under: Free
About Nathaniel Talbot
It’s a busy life for songwriter and farmer Nathaniel Talbot, who runs a vegetable farm and seed company on Whidbey Island, in Washington State’s Puget Sound. When not out cultivating row crops on his solar-powered tractor, he’s inside cultivating songs that are rooted in the earth and American traditionalism. “Working in agriculture, while often physically and emotionally tiring, also provides the mental space and quietude for songs to be sown and nourished,” says Talbot. His sixth album, The Fabric and the Weave, released Oct 2021, marks his most personal and ambitious crop of songs to date.
Raised in the wooded foothills southeast of Portland, OR, the big firs and wide farmscapes of childhood made a life-long impression on Talbot’s songwriting. “The natural setting imprinted on my sense of self, and populated my brain with the imagery and storylines that would later manifest in my songwriting.” He began learning piano at age seven, started a punk rock band at thirteen, and quickly thereafter began steeping himself in guitar-driven sounds of Kelly Joe Phelps, Elliott Smith, Bill Frisell and other Pacific Northwest heroes. Over the next 15 years, Talbot honed an approach to songwriting and storytelling, driven by his complex fingerstyle guitar work, which earned him a distinct place in the northwest folk scene.
Talbot currently performs as a duo with Keegan Harshman on upright bass and as an electric trio with the addition of Mickey Grimm on drums. Despite the full band’s broader, more experimental sonic palette, the music never veers from the grounding force of Talbot’s clear voice, affecting storytelling and distinctive guitar lines.
Nathaniel Talbot’s music has dirt under its fingernails, the product of decades of hard work and crafting – retuning, replanting, and retelling. The result is true American roots music that combines the soulful edge of tradition with the Pacific Northwest’s legacy of freedom and innovation.
