The Nick: A dangerous history of Alabama’s coolest bar

Pam Stallings was burnt-out and ready to sell the place.

"I was done," she says, recalling an early '90s crossroads for her and The Nick, the Birmingham rock-bar she manages and co-owns with Southeastern-music impresario Dan Nolen.

That night she called up Nolen.

Told him she just couldn’t do it anymore, said, “Let’s get out of it” and he agreed.

The next day Stalling showed up for work at The Nick, where a pick-up gig for Wayne Kramer, guitarist for “Kick Out The Jams” proto-punks the MC5, had been added to that night’s bill. A certain local band had previously been scheduled to headline. Stallings tried to get the locals to switch to openers and still get paid headliner money, telling them, “You just don’t want to play after Wayne Kramer.” But the local band refused to open.

That night, Kramer hit the stage and slayed with his fuzz-chord coup. “My jaw hit the floor,” Stallings says. “I was like, ‘Holy crap that is why I am here. That right there saved The Nick.’” The local band didn’t want to go on afterward, but Stallings told them to get up there and own it, and the locals played well - and learned a valuable lesson.

Just another night of transcendent live music and saving rock 'n' roll souls at The Nick. Spectacularly grimy and alluringly dangerous, the place oozes vibe you just can’t buy. Bands have been born, broken-through and broken-up at The Nick. Music fans have had some of the best nights of their lives at this 250-capacity club, housed in a former convenience-store. Future arena-headliners performed here, back when they were still young, hungry and touring in a van. Red Hot Chili Peppers played The Nick five times. Kings of Leon did some of their earliest shows at The Nick. Janes' Addiction played here. Weezer. My Morning Jacket. Korn. Maroon 5. John Mayer. Arcade Fire. Black Keys. Black Crowes. Drive-By Truckers. Alabama Shakes. One of the world’s most famous rock-stars dubbed The Nick, “Birmingham’s dirty little secret” - more on that later.

Nolen had formerly been co-owner of Birmingham’s Brother’s Music Hall, which before closing in 1980 hosted an impressive list of artists including Bob Marley, The Police and Ramones. After opening The Nick in 1982, he reconnected with top booking agents like Scott Clayton and Frank Riley to bring hot talent to his new spot. “I got friendly with the agents,” Nolen says. An Olympic level raconteur, he sports a mop of graying dark hair and oval-shaped glasses. “The agents have the ears and when they call you, you know it’s going to be something good. Everybody starts somewhere, and this was the only place in Birmingham back then that would take an original band.”

Not all “they once played The Nick” folklore is true. R.E.M. never played here (although that alt-rock band’s guitarist, Peter Buck, did). Neither Stallings or Nolen recalls shock-rocker Marilyn Manson performing at The Nick (as one online source indicates). They’re split on whether Smashing Pumpkins ever did.

Of well-known groups, future Bonnaroo headliners Widespread Panic probably played The Nick the most. The jam-band played their first show there - one of the earliest gigs outside of their Athens, Ga. hometown and Atlanta - for $100 on a Wednesday, Nolen says, around 1987. About 30 people showed up. Nolen booked Widespread as a favor to their publicist Mark Pucci, who’d previously worked with the Allman Brothers. During this time, Widespread’s set consisted of originals like “Space Wrangler” as well as Neil Young (“Walk On”) and Traffic (“Dear Mr. Fantasy”) covers.

“We were getting our sea legs,” says Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools, via phone from a Nashville rehearsal space. “Learning how to be a band and how to do what it is that we do.” Widespread also learned what not to do at The Nick. At one of their Nick gigs, the support act was an embryonic version of Aquarium Rescue Unit, led by jam-band guru Bruce Hampton. After watching Hampton and company perform a surreal set, which included a bass solo played using a balloon, Widespread tried to cop that aesthetic. “And we failed miserably,” Schools says. “I remember standing by the van and Bruce Hampton came up to us and said, ‘You guys weren’t really being yourselves up there were you?’ That was a big lesson for us, and it came right there at The Nick, and I’ll never forget it.” At most venues Widespread played they’d get booted out as soon as their show was over. “But the staff at The Nick, we’d stay there until four in the morning with the doors closed,” Schools says. “Just hanging out, chilling and feeling welcome. I can’t even tell you how much that meant to us.”

As their buzz grew, Widespread got to where they could sell-out The Nick. Over a couple years or so, that built to sold-out shows four nights in a row there, with 400 people crammed inside each night. The club’s exterior doors would be swung open, so the 400 or so under-21 hippie kids in The Nick’s parking-lot could hear the music too. The Nick and Birmingham proved to be vital footholds for Widespread Panic. Nolen brought the band to legendary concert promoter Tony Ruffino, who booked them at Pelham’s Oak Mountain Amphitheater and then to other key cities. After decades of playing arenas, theaters and such across the U.S. (including a trio of shows at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre leading up to this New Year’s Eve), Birmingham remains Widespread Panic’s biggest market, according to Nolen. “It’s not just a regular city when we come to Birmingham,” Schools says. “We know there’s a bar we’ve raised and a bar of expectation.” And those expectations can be traced directly back to The Nick.

Nolen got into the bar business not long after graduating from Alabama's Jacksonville State University, where he'd seen acts like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kiss perform. Previously he'd done some bartending in Tuscaloosa. "I got really lucky because the same month I graduated, the state of Alabama passed a law where you could have a bar within one mile of a college campus," Nolen says. "Prior to that everything had to be a mile away." With brother Dub Nolen, Dan opened their Brother's Bar in 1976. "It was a hit from the get-go," Dan says. Brother's started with cover bands. A former classmate who'd become a talent manager called Nolen to see if outlaw-country/Southern rock act Charlie Daniels Band could perform at the club a few nights to work out new material, including a fiddle-stomp called "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." Nolen enthusiastically agreed. The venue expanded their stage to accommodate the band's grand piano. Tickets were sold for about $10 each and Brother's was packed to the gills each night. Nolen saw how much money came in and how much fun people were having and was hooked.

"So, I went from being a bar guy to a music guy and a bar guy," Nolen says. "I love the bar business, but the music added such a different element to it because it's so vital and it's so pure and it's like, 'F-- yeah.'" (Nolen is legitimately artful with expletives.) He says shaking hands with an elite artist like jazz musician Sun Ra is like "touching greatness. It's mind boggling."

Brother's also hosted a similar working-out-kinks residency by Mobile-founded soul rockers Wet Willie, of "Keep on Smilin'" fame. Later, acts like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Gregg Allman would perform there.

In addition to Brother's Music Hall in Birmingham with Ruffino, Nolen also got into managing talent, taking on promising Jacksonville pop-rock band The Fits as clients. One of the venues he booked The Fits in was the Wooden Nickel, a joint located in a tough Southside neighborhood, at 2514 10th Ave. S. Upon arriving for a weekend of gigs there, the Wooden Nickel's owner handed Nolen the keys. The owner had just fired his entire staff. Nolen worked the door for The Fits' Wooden Nickel gigs and brought in a couple friends and his girlfriend/eventual wife to help out. Business was pretty good.

Meeting up again with the Wooden Nickel's owner, Nolen handed him an envelope filled with $550 for his cut. "He said, 'That's more than I've gotten out of this place in two f---ing years. You keep the key and you run the place.'"

Nolen ended up purchasing the Wooden Nickel, a building that had previously been home to B'ham's Finest Qwik Mart.

He wasn’t crazy about the “Wooden” part of the bar’s name. Low on funds, he painted over that word on the building’s existing sign, which left “The” and “Nickel,” up there. Nolen says then, “I took off the ‘el’ off ‘The Nickel,’ because we’re going to be bringing in cutting edge bands, and so we opened up as ‘The Nick’ and it just evolved into ‘The Nick Rocks,’” as the sign now reads, “because the f---ing Nick rocks and it has for 37 years.” A regular at the bar, Nolen can’t recall that person’s name now, created the dancing-girl design that also emblazons the sign.

Ruffino and Nolen had shuttered Brother’s Music Hall due to a struggling economy, the gas crisis, decrease in touring, etc. “I just kind of hung out and played poker for about a year,” Nolen says. Since other smaller local venues only hosted cover bands, he thought The Nick could make a mark - and money - by filling a “huge void” in club-level original music in Birmingham.

Back when Brother's Music Hall was still going, Nolen had noticed Stallings, a live music fan and striking redhead who "was at all the cool shows" there. She's also frequented gigs by acts like Iggy Pop at Old Town Music Hall on Morris Avenue. Stallings started going to the Wooden Nickel after Nolen took over, when her friend's bands performed there. A Detroit native and Cullman High School grad, after finishing up at University of Alabama at Birmingham, Stallings went to work at her parents' ammunition factory in Cullman, mailing out price lists. "Family circumstances dictated" she was let go at the factory. "I had $250 in my bank account," Stallings recalls. "My rent is due in a week. I've got to do something and do something quick. My sister suggested the bar business or waiting tables and I had been coming in (to The Nick) regularly for the entire time, about a year I guess. I just loved the place and I was here almost every night it was open."

After Stallings returned some money The Nick's doorman had dropped on the floor at the bar, she got a job interview, held in the bar's tiny back office. She was around 22. Stallings started off as a waitress, was promoted to bartender and then manager. "She earned her way," Nolen says. "We became very close and shared the same ideas and developed a trust." After one of Nolen's business partners with "a fairly bad drug habit" fell off the wagon again, Nolen bought him out. For about two years, Nolen booked and managed The Nick by himself. But eventually Nolen felt he was in a rut, and began traveling to Atlanta often, where he started a publishing company and drive over and scout bands a couple times a week. Nolen, who had been living in a Milner Court house, maybe a mile or so from The Nick, decide he needed a new challenge and would move to Atlanta.

Around 1988, he went to Stallings with an offer: Would she be interested in buying half the business? He'd book and she'd manage. " It was a good match," says Nolen, who also owns notable Atlanta venue Smith's Olde Bar among other ventures.

When Stallings became partner she and the staff pulled out every staple affixing band-photos to The Nick's interior, which was painted brown back then, and painted everything black. She helped pop the tiles off the floor too.

If you’ve been inside The Nick in the last 30 years, you know staples and band photos have returned in force. With wall-space covered, the black-and-white photos now adorn much of the ceiling too, following a bartender named Carey Jacks' suggestion.

Glancing up at the patinaed images overhead, it can feel like you’re standing inside the “Exile on Main St” album cover. Over the years, photos of more famous bands, like Red Hot Chili Peppers, have been stolen, Stallings says. The walls have also accrued random deluge adding to the dive-y ambience. A mounted deer head. A Muppet dangling from an old guitar. Enough band stickers to populate a small nation. A wall-mounted flat-screen TV and internet jukebox hint this is the 21st century. At 1 p.m. on a Thursday, it’s dark and impossible to tell if it’s day or night outside unless someone opens the front door. The Nick’s stage runs the length of one wall, with a humongous American flag mounted behind it. Some of Stallings' friends brought the flag in around 30 years ago, after lifting it from a prominent automobile dealership. The graffitied bathroom compares unfavorably to the infamous facilities at New York’s CBGB, Nolen says, in a reverse humble-brag.

It was Bono who gave The Nick the tagline the venue now uses on its website. The U2 singer stopped in one night, along with bassist Adam Clayton (or was it drummer Larry Mullen Jr.?), sat at the end of the bar and ordered a Fosters and shot of Cuervo. Surveying the tattooed tableau, Bono remarked, “Ah, Birmingham’s dirty little secret.” Stallings says this was around the time U2 was driving around the U.S. looking for material for their 1987 “Joshua Tree” album. (There’s a chance she means “Rattle and Hum,” the band’s 1988 album/film/love-letter to American music.)

Other celebs to have knocked back a few at The Nick include Dave Grohl. The late Scott Weiland of ’90s stars Stone Temple Pilots once hung out. Actor Kevin Bacon was here not long ago. Lots of comedians, like David Cross. Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard sat at the bar on a recent New Year’s Eve, and “had a large time,” Stallings says.

Los Angeles band Jane’s Addiction’s show at The Nick, which took place Feb. 10, 1989 according to setlist.fm, is one of the venue’s most famous gigs. And most infamous. Jack Massey, then drummer with The Hitchcocks, a young Tuscaloosa band influenced by Husker Du and The Replacements, was at the Jane’s show. After a long wait following the support act’s set, Massey recalls once Jane’s Addiction unleashed their punkish art-metal “the place was swaying back and forth, it felt like.”

Unfortunately, dreadlocked Jane’s singer Perry Farrell “started dogging Birmingham,” Massey says, “telling people from the stage, ‘You should move from this stupid town. I can’t even find heroin here.’” After some boos from the crowd the band rocked-on, but ended their set after only about 30 minutes. Once they walked out The Nick’s side stage-door, Jane’s Addiction was gone for good. No encore. Less than a year later the band would be headlining UAB Arena on the strength of sophomore album " Ritual de lo habitual" and hit “Been Caught Stealing.” At the UAB gig Farrell apologized onstage for their Nick showing, Stallings says. These days Massey drums for The Ladies Of, a band fronted by James Hall, formerly of Mary My Hope, the Atlanta band that opened for Jane’s at The Nick.

Dark drug undercurrents were also part of what Nolen says was Red Hot Chili Peppers' last show there. When it was time for the L.A. funk-rockers to take the stage, guitarist Hillel Slovak was nowhere to be found. Eventually he was discovered holed up in The Nick’s office, and in a bad way. “But he got up there and played great,” Nolen says. “Three weeks later he was dead.” Blind Melon, known for “Bee Girl” music-video hit “No Rain,” were booked at The Nick, but after the band arrived, singer Shannon Hoon refused to do the show. Hoon thought he was above playing a place like this, Stallings says.

Some memorable Nick shows take place with not many people there to witness them. Lee Shook, a local DJ and music writer, had read about a young garage-blues duo from Akron, Ohio called the Black Keys. Intrigued by descriptions he’d read of the band and liking a track he’d heard, he decided to check out Black Keys' show at The Nick. The Black Keys were touring in support of their raw 2002 debut album “The Big Come Up.” There were only maybe 20 or 30 people in the audience. “But for just two guys onstage they completely kept everybody in rapt attention and just killed it,” Shook recalls. “It was such a good show.” He’d brought his Nikon 35mm camera along and shot the show. Later, he hung out with the band on The Nick’s front deck, a signature feature adorned with a weathered marquee, and bought an album and T-shirt from them.

“It was one of those really special ‘Nick nights’ you don’t realize you’re going to have,” Shook says. “Walking in on a band that’s going to be this huge entity for years to come.” He’s since seen Black Keys perform at Hangout Music Festival and Bonnaroo, where the two dudes he once watched from 10 feet away at The Nick were now “tiny faraway dots.” Shook’s other top “Nick nights” include a flooded-in show by New Orleans ensemble Rebirth Brass Band that went deep into next morning. (The Nick has a late-night-club license that allows it to stay open until 4 a.m. Friday nights and 6 a.m. Saturday nights.) “You can have these once-in-a-lifetime moments here,” Shook says. “Some rooms and spaces just have an aura to them - and that can be studios, a house like (The Band’s) Big Pink or clubs - that people are attracted to. Especially rock 'n' rollers.”

For all Nick’s impressive bookings, others slipped through their fingers. For example, Nolen says he missed on the White Stripes “by that much.”

While many legendary Nick shows involved future stars, the venue has also hosted less-glamorous punk notables, like Black Flag. Massey recalls driving to a Minutemen show to give bassist Mike Watt a tape of Massey’s Minutemen cover-band. Watt was shocked to learn a Minutemen cover-band even existed. For aspiring Alabama musicians, going to The Nick to see (and sometimes meet) heroes perform can be as invigorating as performing there themselves.

Stallings' favorite local bands to have played here include twang-punks Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires and The Dexateens, both of which have released live performances from The Nick. “The energy coming off that stage is just amazing, the songwriting’s great and the people are great,” she says. Asked for the loudest band to ever play The Nick, Stallings cites Juicifer, a metallic Athens, Ga. duo known for brandishing enough amps to liquify a city block.

The Nicks' utilitarian layout makes it ideal for musicians to play there. “You’re not competing with TVs or other rooms,” says guitarist/songwriter Jim Troglen, known as Johnny Blade when he performed with local gutter-rockers Autumn Lords during the ’90s. “They always kept it focused on the music.” The Nick even played an integral role in Autumn Lords' formation, Troglen says. He’d been trying to track down a singer named Chris Lowery (later known as D.D. Starshaker) for his new band, but Lowery didn’t have a phone so Troglen would leave messages for him at the bar

Troglen estimates Autumn Lords, who drew from bands like Alice Cooper, played around 25 gigs at The Nick. Looking up from his Les Paul onstage into the audience, Troglen says a Nick crowd is often a mix of “blue collar people, black, white, a lot of metal heads, even a little bit of a hip-hop crowd.” There could be additional curiosities out there. Like, say, a plastered, shoeless young woman wandering around wearing a ballgown. Asked if bands tend to play a little better at The Nick, Troglen - who co-wrote Brother Cane frontman Damon Johnson’s upcoming solo LP and is a member of Massey’s band The Ladies Of - says, “Absolutely. It mattered.” He also feels The Nick wields real cultural significance. "I always get people who say, ‘Hey man, I want to go see that place called The Nick.’ It’s like, “Let’s go see Muscle Shoals Sound' or ‘Let’s go to Yosemite.’”

The best rock music contains an element of danger and The Nick can be legitimately dangerous. At night, the parking lot is dicey. There have been overdoses inside the club. “Anything and everything that could possibly happen in a bar has happened here, other than someone being killed,” Nolen says, frankly. (The neighborhood may be rough, but Nolen is grateful for community support he says was essential in becoming an after-hours club.) It’s not all rock, drugs and peril at The Nick. Some people have met their future spouses here. The afternoon crowd is a non-threatening, pool-shooting mix of carpenters, painters and lawyers.

Like virtually any entity that’s been in the music business this long, The Nick has faced tough times. Stallings says some past “bad press that wasn’t accurate” led to one of the venue’s most challenging periods. “We got thrown under the bus a few times,” Nolen says. There have been accusations the bar clips from bands' takes, but Nolen says it was a doorman doing the pilfering (a common rock malady) and not the business.

Through it all, the back-beat goes on. So why has The Nick survived when some other Birmingham rock clubs have come and gone? “I think there a lot of different reasons” Stallings says. “The music has moved with the time, when things changed we changed. We kept the vibe of a neighborhood bar. I never did any drugs so there was no dipping out of the till for that. Dan’s talent for picking good people and those people being very loyal to him, and to me now. This is a non-judgmental place. We don’t care about your sexual preference or your religion or your political affiliations or color of your skin - or your habits, as long as you’re not hurting anybody.”

Nolen’s booking probably can’t be understated in The Nick’s run. But even that’s evolved. He misses the days when booking was done by-phone, the thrill of getting a call from a hotshot agent. And Nolen still idolizes Ruffino, who died in 2011: “Tony taught me a lot about being a man, how to handle hardship, how to be a leader and a better business man.” From Atlanta, Nolen continues to book The Nick, writing bills down by hand in a spiral-bound calendar. He often has dates held six months in advance. “It’s a legend and kind of a rite of passage,” Nolen says. “You may only make 12 bucks, but you can say you’ve played The Nick. All this history that’s here, I love the place.” Like most talent buyers, he now books via email and other digital messaging. “Once the internet came along, it was a lot more ‘pass,’ ‘no,’ ‘not enough money.’ I fought against it for a very long time but it’s technology and that’s what they’re doing.”

But technology can’t stop rock 'n' roll. And neither can precipitation. One of Stallings' fondest Nick memories involves a circa-1996 bill featuring underground rockers Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Dixie Demolition Rods and bluesman R.L. Burnside. It started snowing around noon that day. Stallings knew they had a sure sell-out. Once the snow hit, she packed up her dog Toulie, blankets, pillows, as many coats as she could find and drove to The Nick. She started answering the phone, telling everybody that called-in asking, the show was still on. “Actually, I did not know that,” Stallings says now.

By nightfall, six inches of snow was on the ground. Although there were only six cars in The Nick parking lot, inside there were 350 people. An epic pile of coats accumulated on the pool-table, and Toulie, short for Tchoupitoulas (Stallings also maintains a New Orleans residence), roosted there. Around 8:30 p.m., R.L. Burnside showed up at The Nick. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion made it there around 9. Demolition Doll Rods, who perform while wearing bikinis, were supposed to go on at 10 p.m. They slid into the parking lot at the last minute, loaded in, slapped on their bikinis and guitars and hit the stage at 10:02 p.m.

“I get chill bumps talking about it,” Stallings says. “The show lasted forever, and it was electric. Everyone in here was just so happy and there wasn’t a fight, there wasn’t an argument. Everybody was elated to be at The Nick and to see this show. And it was magical.”

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