Written by : Nick Hopton & Photographed by Bob Linneman
There’s something about Philadelphia during the holidays. I’m talking about the ones we used to have: snow, laughter, love. We don’t get too many of those around here anymore. Times have changed. People have changed. The paradox of life is that we never really take full advantage of the moments that really mean the most as they’re happening, but rather look on them years later, knowing that they were the best of times. But for a night in December, magic once again took form. This time, it was in the form of a little rock and roll band that, despite the odds against them, took on the fucking world 20 years ago. That, despite the odds, created one of the single greatest rock and roll albums in not only Philadelphia history, but the whole damn world. And that, despite all those odds… is still here… playing that rock and roll.
Silvertide
Nick Perri, co-founder and guitar virtuoso, commanded the stage with an unmistakable electricity that took me right back to his earliest days. Twenty years might have passed, but that raw, unbridled energy still courses through his veins – now beautifully tempered by years of road-worn wisdom and masterful musicianship.
The story of Nick Perri reads like a rock and roll fairy tale – from the wide-eyed teenage prodigy lighting up Silvertide to the seasoned frontman now leading The Underground Thieves. But a few days prior to the show, he and I were able to meet up and talk about life, love, and rock and roll. Sitting across from him, years after our first time meeting under similar circumstances, it felt like time had not passed for us at all. Life might have changed around us in many ways, but he’s still the same good, honest person that I met way back then. It’s incredibly hard to hold true to oneself in this business. It can change you in ways that you never thought were possible and into someone you’re not, and unfortunately, it’s usually for the worse. But for Nick Perri… it’s about personal growth and staying real.
Five Years Gone
Five long (yet seemingly short) years ago, I was tasked with doing my first-ever interview. I would be sitting down with local legend Nick Perri at a little bar in West Chester in the days leading up to his new band, The Underground Thieves, opening for The Struts at the Fillmore Philadelphia. We walked in that day as strangers and left as friends. Crazy how life works like that sometimes. In the years since, the world has changed. A lot. But there’s one thing that is a constant: the evolution of one’s self. And as a musician, it can be a wild ride. Taking stock of that and reminiscing about the journey can remind you of just how far you’ve come.
“Well, there’s two halves to this. I would say there’s 2019 through 2023, and then there’s 2023 through today. And they’re gonna be two different answers. The first half of that would be like it was a period of exponential growth. It was like the curve was straight up because the Fillmore shows were the very first shows as Nick Perri and the Underground Thieves, where I was like ‘the front man.’ So I got to have a taste of that. I spent 20 years at that point in the music business, you know, not being the front man, and then I got to, like, BE the front person. And of course, I had an amazing band all around me. But that was like the show that I was leading, you know what I mean? And doing the majority of the singing on. And it was… it just felt so, it was like holding a bolt of lightning. It was so exciting and so great. And after that, I was literally off to the races.”
“Very early into 2020, there was already a release plan for Sun Via. I had the confidence at that point because I already had put out ‘Feeling Good.’ And the response to that song was tremendous. That song got the most excited response of anything I’ve ever put out, like going back to Silvertide. So it was like Silvertide, then everything else, then that. It was like that hearkened back to that level of excitement… which was amazing. So it was like, okay, I not only can do this, but like, I have a lot of people in my corner who also agree that I can do it. That confidence is all I needed to really hit the ground, and I just started writing. I mean, I was always writing songs, but I started, like, really just spending all my time writing, because at that point it was like someone had opened the floodgates for me and just been like, ‘Go.’”
With the popularity of songs Feeling Good and Let You Know, Sun Via felt like a launching point for Nick and his Thieves. Work began on the follow-up album, Terra Firma.
“I would say that I feel like in that moment I really did have something that I wanted to prove—not to anybody else, which is an interesting dichotomy. It wasn’t like I owed anybody anything. I felt like, to myself, I wanted to prove to myself, whether it was conscious or subconscious, that I could sort of be the artist that I always, on some levels, wanted to be. The fact that I didn’t need permission or didn’t need anybody else’s approval was just like, I was just ready to go. So that was really like leading. It was like almost this subconscious desire. And if I’m really being honest with you, I’d always wanted to. Because Show and Tell happened so early in my career, and the record was produced incredibly well, I wanted to produce a record that could stand toe to toe sonically. I didn’t want to accept that my sonic footprint happened when I was 18. I wanted to at least match it, if not beat it, now.”
And he did just that. Sonically, that album is overflowing with depth and originality. It’s a true testament to “I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do it my fucking way.” Years were spent on this record to make it as perfect as it could be. And when you listen to Terra Firma, you can feel it. Many albums now just feel thrown together, pieced up without any true soul to them. Just notes. Terra Firma is a true fucking album. A flashback to the days when albums actually mattered, not just the singles that hit the radio. But, unfortunately, the music industry has changed. And cruel realities hit now more than ever.
The music industry is no longer about the music.
“Music Is Spiritual. The Music Business Is Not.”
“I was on this high rise, and everything up until the release of Terra Firma, it was just like, even though it was a pandemic and it was a fucking weird time and it was a tough time, it was a prolific and important time in my story. A time that I’m very proud of. We ended up touring during that time more than anybody thought we could. That being said, from the time Terra Firma was completely mixed and mastered, I had it in my hands for almost a year before it actually came out. Which a lot of people don’t know. And I spent a whole year basically shopping the record and trying to find a partner to help me put the record out. I believed it was good enough, and I believed there were enough singles that could have gone to radio on the record. I’m bummed to say, and I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this publicly, but that process was like the absolute worst, most disheartening, most soul-crushing process of my entire career. I think something like 60 labels and—not just any one type, but the biggest labels to the smallest indie labels and everybody in between—had passed on the record. I had a tracker on a private link and could tell when people were opening and listening to the record. Out of 60 labels, I think only five or so listened to the record. And the rest I was turned down by because I didn’t have the TikTok numbers and Spotify numbers. I was like, my whole career I worked to be a good enough songwriter, producer, and artist to be able to produce this body of work. No 17-year-old could do Terra Firma. I’m not saying I’m the only one in the world who could do it. There’s plenty of talented, amazing people, but the depth we’re talking about and the ability to produce a record like that and write a record like that comes with time and life experience. And no, I didn’t have the TikTok numbers, but I had something that you can’t buy with numbers, which is the whole lived experience of 25 years in the record industry and being an artist, songwriter, and producer.”
Everyone gets punched in the mouth in life, either literally or metaphorically. But as the great Rocky Balboa once said…
“It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
Terra Firma, while not commercially successful, is a win. Nick set out to make the album that HE felt was his best work. And he accomplished that. Screw what the suits think. In the grand story of rock and roll, the powers that be have been wrong WAY more times than they have been right. This is just another instance of missing something great right in front of your face.
“I was able to service the fans who wanted it. I was able to get the record into the hands of people who wanted it, which is still a win. I was still able to sell thousands of vinyls, CDs, and cassettes and have the music reach people, for which I’m eternally grateful.”
Still…taking the hit and getting back up doesn’t make it hurt any less. That pain can sting for a long time if you let it. Sometimes, though, you just need to sit back and let life happen for a while.
“I had to take a pause. I also went through some personal stuff in my life that needed some changing. I moved across the country again, my fifth cross-country move and final. I’m dying in California. That’s it, I’m done moving. I mean, I’ll come visit, of course. Silvertide is based here, but I’m not moving back. So that being said, I’ve had a little bit of time. Time does heal. I wrote a song right before I moved that I thought was really good because I have a bar now, you know? After ‘Sunset to Sunset,’ ‘Waiting for You,’ and ‘I Want to Be Free’ and some of these other songs, I don’t want to put out songs that aren’t as good as those songs, you know what I mean? So I’m a very harsh critic of my own stuff now, which I’ve always been. It’s not like I haven’t been playing or writing. I just haven’t been pursuing it. I haven’t been actively trying to make a record. I needed a fucking break. But I did write a song that I felt like was one of my best of all time, and I felt worthy of putting the time in. I was able to pull some favors even before I was completely moved in. I was able to get into a studio in California, a really nice studio with some great friends, and was able to cut a new song, a new Thieves single with some new players on it, and it’s really fucking good. And if all goes well, it’ll be out for Valentine’s Day.”
There’s always light at the end of the tunnel. As far away as it may seem sometimes, it is there. And sometimes, that’s all we need to keep going: just a little glimmer.
“I’m gonna keep releasing singles until I feel like I have the moxie to go make another record. I think, unfortunately, that’s also the way the music business is right now. It’s single-driven, not album-driven anymore. It’s disheartening to say that, but it’s the way that you see a whole lot of things. That’s how I started The Thieves. I started it with releasing songs, gauging interest. You gauge temperature, and then you go from there. I mean, I’ve never really been one to give a fuck about what anyone else is doing. I feel like it’s the synchronicity of it. But for me, and I’m not trying to sound like an asshole, it’s just like, for me, when I feel like I have the energy and the drive, and I have something to say with a body of work that’s 10 or more songs, then I’ll make an album, whether it’s an album era or not. But it just so happens that I’m only really feeling like doing singles right now. So it works.”
“Morning Light”
In between the creation of his own music, Perri has his chops in another realm of creation: studio work. Teaming up with some of the best musicians in the world to help their visions come to life on tape. In fact, his style, demeanor, and ability have him quickly becoming one of the most sought-after session guitarists in LA.
“I have an extremely broad, eclectic taste in music. Growing up on kind of older records from the ’60s and ’70s, you know, is an obvious influence that shaped my early world. I don’t listen to guitar-driven classic rock anywhere near as much as people might think. I listen to a lot of other stuff: electronic music, pop, indie, alternative, and everything in between. And I’ve been playing multiple genres of music and styles my whole life. So I’ve jumped back into the role of session guitarist, which I’ve done at various points in my career when I’ve had time, and it so happens that I’m back in LA. When I’m in between albums and tours, I have the time, and it’s a way to make money and keep my chops up. So it’s win, win, win for everybody. Getting back into the session guitarist role this year was just so fucking easy and natural. I was getting calls to do a lot of pop. I’m playing on a ton of pop and on some big pop artist records that are coming out this year. And it was so much fun, so easy, and so great, and I got to bring my Nick Perri thing to it, you know? I also did some rock records that are sick. I feel like I was completely ready for it. I was completely ready to step in and fulfill all those roles because of my 30 years of listening to music training. I had the ear already ready to go, and it was just like step in, lock and load, and go. Execute. And I think that’s why the producers I was working with really like me. I can play in time, I can play in tune, and I was very fast. They’d be like, ‘How about that? How about this? Can you try this?’ And I was like, sure, sure, sure. You know, that’s a fucking dream. No editing and comping, no tuning, and like yep, just play it right.”
The places you’ll go. The people you meet. As I mentioned earlier, one of the first big gigs for The Underground Thieves was opening for The Struts. Through the years, a friendship blossomed between Nick and the band, one which has not only seen him fill in on guitar for them a few times… but also embarked him on a completely out-of-this-world journey. Mars, to be exact. Well, not literally Mars, but playing a residency in LA, side by side with Luke Spiller, frontman of The Struts and one of rock and roll’s greatest modern frontmen, as well as one of David Bowie’s Spiders from Mars: famed piano player Mike Garson. Together, this group would tackle the best pieces of Bowie’s catalog while throwing in some surprises as well.
“It was incredible. Luke called me, and I had seen on Instagram the last two years that he was doing shows. These kind of intimate shows at the Sun Rose on Sunset with Mike. But I didn’t really… you know how we digest things online? It’s fast, and everybody’s busy, and it didn’t really clock with me, like what was actually happening there. Then he called me, and he was like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna do my third year with Mike.’ It finally hit me. I have a story with being turned on to David Bowie. I was 16 years old, and the guys from Pepper’s Ghost—Michael, Anthony, I don’t know if Robbie was there, but it was definitely Michael and Anthony—took a young Nick Perri, 16 years old, to The Ritz in downtown Philly, and we watched the Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars concert film in a giant movie theater. And I didn’t realize that Mike Garson was in that band, and that not only was he in that band, but that he opened that show. Bowie put him out on stage first, and he opened the show, solo piano, and then played with them. And once I started putting all the pieces together and then realized that not only was he an original Spider from Mars, but had played on Rebel Rebel and Aladdin Sane and all this iconic shit, and then played on Fragile, which is my favorite Nine Inch Nails record, and did the iconic Bowie/Nine Inch Nails tour in ‘94. Fucking insane. I mean peak Nine Inch Nails, and he was there every night and played and hung out with Trent, and they played on stage together and like just mind-blowing shit. So obviously, Luke is my friend, and I’ve played with him a million times by now. He is, like you said, one of the great frontmen of our time. Once I ended up putting all the pieces together, I was very excited to do it. But nothing could prepare me for being on stage, having my eyes closed and hearing him play Life on Mars. I had goosebumps over my entire body. I was just like, this is like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When I saw it on the big screen, they got to Moonage Daydream in the set. I saw Mick Ronson, and he played that iconic solo with the echoplex, and it’s like this live and on the record, it’s an incredible recording. It was a life-changing moment for me as a guitarist and as a musician to then actually be able to play that solo, and I did the Mick Ronson thing note for note. Sitting there, I was like, man, playing with THE guy, and that was full circle. I completed the loop. So very grateful for that opportunity. But we were so excited, and I think that the energy was just so uplifting and so wonderful for everybody that acknowledged how special it was. Like, these weren’t just like throwaway gigs; everybody was really into it. It meant something.”
“Son of a Preacher Man”
Rock and roll. The end-all, be-all. The religion that, no matter what race, background, or spirituality you hold, accepts all with open arms and without prejudice. Lives have been saved from hearing its prayers, written by too many prophets and missionaries to even begin to count. Hopes and dreams have been obtained by the believers simply trying to create a passage of their own. It’s a never-ending story, one that will continue long after you and I are gone. Sure, it goes through times when it’s not believed in as heavily as in years past, but there are always those who will worship at its altar. But what does it mean in our current time? What does it hold for us moving forward? Can it once again save us from ourselves?
“The whole state of the world is in such fucking disarray. I feel like the world right now, more than anything, regardless of genre, needs the spirit of rock and roll. And I feel like I’ve seen that quality in a number of artists in other genres. I feel now more than ever that the ‘spirit’ is what we’re really talking about. We desperately need renegades, and we need people who go against the status quo. More than ever, we need people to stand up for basic human rights. We need the rock and roll spirit in our modern civilization. We need the rock and roll spirit in our world, in politics, and in capitalism. We need rock and roll pioneering in all these other facets of life because everything’s become so fucked. We need some rebellion. I’m fucking ready. I’ll go march tomorrow. I am absolutely ready to challenge all this shit. I’ll tell you what, though, in the pop world… Chappell Roan is as rock and roll as you get. She is taking none of the traditional shit. She is accepting and taking none of it. You could see it when she’s on a red carpet… she doesn’t give a fuck, and it’s so refreshing. And it’s so wonderful. I feel like that spirit needs to be applied to every aspect of what we’re doing, and just because something has been a certain way for 20 years or 50 years or 100 years, it doesn’t mean that it’s working. And in a lot of cases, look at the state of the world—it’s not working. So I think that seeing her spirit and her willingness to challenge all of it and to go after even the notion of celebrity and be like, just because I’m an artist and doing something that you like doesn’t mean that you can bother me at the truck stop and ask for a picture. Just because you like my music doesn’t entitle you to that. The way that we think we can act when we see a celebrity, when we see somebody that we like a lot… And regardless of how you feel about each individual circumstance, that’s not the point. And the people who get hung up on that are missing the point. The point is, it’s okay and should be widely accepted to challenge the notions that we have in place. Because if we’re not doing that, we’re already failing at democracy. We’re already failing at the spirit of the whole country, what the whole country was founded on. So I feel like more than ever we need rock and roll everywhere.”
So many of the great bands have inner turmoil. It’s inevitable. For those of you who have not had the “joy” of playing in and being a part of a band, imagine that you were dating 4-5 people simultaneously. Everyone has to be heard and understood, feel important, and have their needs met. Also, to be held accountable for what they are or are not doing to help the relationship flourish. You are going to fight. No way around it. What really matters is how much you value each other, and the steps you are willing to take to keep things moving forward, together.
“After the ten-year anniversary, things weren’t great. The thing that makes Silvertide live is also the thing that makes Silvertide break up all the time. We always joke that we break up the most of any band. We’re always breaking up. We’ve broken up so many times that I can’t even count. It’s just really a personality thing. We all love each other, and we all are decent human beings. It’s just you put five of us in a room, and it’s very heated. But it’s the thing that makes Silvertide great. It’s also the thing that makes us very hard to work with. I’m just being honest about it. After that ten-year anniversary, I was kind of soured. I think some other people were soured, and I had no interest in talking to anybody about more shows. I mean, obviously, Walt’s my best friend, and I play with Brian all the time. But even those dynamics with those people are just different than even the dynamic with those people in Silvertide. I think because our personalities and our roles were established so young, it’s like everybody kind of falls back into what those roles were, for better or worse. It’s a touchy subject. It’s a touchy thing to get us all together and have it go well. So there was a group thread, and Kevin brought up getting together. This was right after Sun Via came out. And with all due respect to him, I just completely shut it down. There was absolutely no chance in the world I had any time to even comprehend having a discussion about Silvertide. Let’s talk again when, you know, when we get close to 20 years (of Show and Tell). I can foresee a situation where maybe we talk about celebrating the 20-year anniversary, but until then, I’m out. I’m just very honest with everybody. I don’t bullshit, I just… I try to be a nice, respectful, considerate human being, but I just say it the way it is because there’s just literally no time. Anyway, eventually, I had a conversation with Walt. For Silvertide to work, Walt and I kind of need to be aligned, or it’s kind of moot. So I just… I had a long conversation with Walt. We talked about the things that we wanted, we talked about the things that we didn’t want. We decided to talk to everybody else and gauge some temperatures. We all had a meeting, and we had to align our vision and goals because if that didn’t work, it would have also been a moot point. It would just have been like a nonstarter. So, the initial meeting that we had went well, and everybody felt good about it, so okay, things are a little bit more serious. Then we started talking about what it would look like and what shows we would play if we would play shows. Would we work on new stuff? What would we do with our time? Would we finally put merchandise online? Would we finally put Show and Tell on vinyl? All these things are floating in the air. And the answer is… we’re talking about all of them. It’s just certain things have come to fruition sooner than others. And I think that as long as… like I said to everybody else, I’m not expecting this to become my full-time job ever again. So forget about the money and like, for me, it has to be fun. It has to be rewarding in a creative and like fun way, or there’s no reason for me to do it. It shouldn’t feel like work. So we all agreed to try to the best of our abilities to keep it fun, to keep it lighthearted, and also to celebrate. I’m into the idea of celebrating the work because we did work really hard. We put our whole lives into it back then, and we made a record that we still do feel stands the test of time, both sonically and songwise. People still write us every day that week that it’s their favorite album or in their top five or their top ten. It’s all over the world. I got a guy who wrote me from Peru last night. There are some people flying here from Japan for the show. So because of all those things, I do think we have something worth celebrating. At the very least, even if shit hits the fan on December 21st… on December 20th, we’re celebrating all the work that was done leading up to it. And if we don’t kill each other and we don’t break up on the 21st, then we can look forward to more things in 2025. If I was a betting man, I would say more things were coming in 2025. As long as somebody doesn’t kill somebody else, somebody doesn’t punch somebody in the face and go to jail, which already happened. Something like this, you have to take it day by day. Plan, but don’t plan too far ahead.”
“Horizon”
Five years can feel different for many people. To some, it feels like yesterday. To others, an entire lifetime. But there is something that is not bound to our perception of time: evolution. Personally, emotionally, artistically. When we spoke last, it was a rebirth in music and life for Perri. We’ve talked about how the last five have transpired, but what about the next? Who does someone want to be? Or rather, who does someone want to become?
“I really don’t want to be anybody outside of the best version of myself as humanly possible. I’m proud of who I am. It’s taken all these years, but I finally feel pretty comfortable in this skin. I would hope that I’m a busy producer and I’m helping create multiple records a year that I’d love. I would also love to be a busy session musician who’s playing on records all year that I love, and helping other artists bring their songs to fruition through my playing and my production. I wouldn’t mind playing some festivals and playing some shows every once in a while with Silvertide guys. I wouldn’t mind being on tour every once in a while if it was the right tour and the right accommodations and the right pay, because touring is really tough and it’s not something I say yes to right away. You know, when I was in The Struts opening for Queens of the Stone Age in arenas in Canada, there was salmon catering every night and traveling in a bus and beautiful hotels, and I’m like, ‘Great, I’ll do that anytime… sign me up anytime and twice on Tuesday.’ I’m not gonna do living in the van, five people in one hotel room, sharing a bed with Brian Weaver. I’m not gonna do that anymore. I did that up until very recently. The final piece of that puzzle now for me to be fully happy and fulfilled as a musician… I have to keep making records. I have to keep putting out my own records. There’s just no other way around it. I know myself now too well to know that I can’t exclude that part. I finally feel like, as a producer, as a songwriter, I’m hitting a stride where I’m really proud of the work. It’s on a level that I feel is worthy of my time. The future for me is a balance of all those things, and I think that if I could go back in time, I would have opened myself up to doing more of that along the way this whole time. I was very tunnel-visioned, but I feel like to have given birth to that chapter and that part of my life, like you’re saying, that was kind of the start, a rebirth of creativity. The only way that I could have kind of landed in that role and concentrated hard enough to get those records out… I don’t know that it could have happened while I was doing ten other things. Certainly not Terra Firma. That was an all-consuming two years of my life. I was doing the role of twelve people on that record. All of it fell on me. We would go home from the studio, and it’s like I was then left with months of work in my studio editing, because we just kept capturing tracks. Somebody has to go through all of it. Someone has to make those creative decisions. Someone has to choose. And it’s a lot of pressure because it’s going to be that way on that record forever. So all that stuff took incredible tunnel vision. But now, I feel like I’ve figured out that the way forward is going to be more open to doing all those things, and that my career, if it’s working, is probably going to include all those things as opposed to just one aspect of it. So, in five years, I hope to sit with you and go, ‘Dude, I nailed it. I’m doing all those things. I’m busy, but I’ve got a good work-and-personal-life balance, and most importantly, I’m enjoying life.’ That’s what ultimately I want. I just want to enjoy life and be happy.”
Some stories sing louder than others. Nick Perri’s musical odyssey rings like a power chord from Hell. From the wide-eyed kid setting Philadelphia on fire with Silvertide to the seasoned soul now charting the next routes for The Underground Thieves.
Life’s melody carried him coast to coast, and though California might be his final resting place, Philadelphia’s siren song always beckons him to come back. Even if he ain’t coming home.
As I watched him on stage on that cold, snowy December night, he’s no longer just that guitar wizard of yesterday, but a complete artist painting with every color in his soul. Gone are the days of chasing his dream. He has it. The dream became reality. Now it’s just man, guitar, and truth.
Sometimes the longest road leads right back to your doorstep. Nick’s journey—from those electric nights on South Street to arena tours and back again—whispers a beautiful truth: real success isn’t about following footsteps in the sand, but about leaving your own unique mark on the world’s stage.
For Cairo Perri
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