Nashville’s Great Peacock?? comprised of lead singer and guitarist Andrew Nelson, guitarist Blount Floyd, drummer Nick Recio and bass player Frank Keith IV ?? are fixtures in the Southern festival circuit including Shakey Knees, they’ve shared stages with an abundance of equally-minded noise-makers, including Colter Wall, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Cage the Elephant, American Aquarium, Margo Price, and Jonathan Tyler.
Nelson recounts the birth of the band. Late one night, when they were drunk on Bushwackers, Nelson, “…jokingly said we were going to start a folk band, and we wrote a song called ‘Desert Lark.’” Close friends and family raved about what they had nonchalantly created. The band soon became a reality in early 2013, and their debut album Making Ghosts arrived two years later.
Having grown up in a rather sheltered Pentecostal household in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, Nelson tuned into the only secular music he was allowed to listen to: the local oldies station. “What really got me into music is the blues. When I was a teenager I really liked John Lee Hooker, Freddy King, BB King and Buddy Guy. I think you can hear these influences in the new songs in some ways. At an early age, I learned how hitting the right chords at the right times could really mess with somebody’s emotions.”
It wasn’t until he was 14 years old that he heard Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” for the first time, and it changed everything. “When I heard the guitar solo, I freaked out. I went downstairs and started playing my brother’s guitars when he wasn’t home. I taught myself how to play, because I loved that song so much. I would get my ass kicked for breaking his strings, though. I had to learn fast, and I knew I wouldn’t get a guitar from my parents if I didn’t already show some interest or effort.”