Nickel and Steel

Nickel and Steel began in an Oak Park, Illinois basement. For years, Paul Stephanides poured his soul into sad songs that no one heard. Melancholy ballads of mental illness, trauma, injustice, religion and the general cruelty of the human race. Feeling that these songs could get sadder still, an old friend of his father introduced him to Chicagoan Karl Paulsen.

After a decade and a half as a honky-tonk bass player, Karl was seeking new lows of misery in the weeping moans of the pedal steel guitar. Together, progress was made, but the two of them were only able to reach their present depths of delicious despondency with the addition of classically-trained upright bass player Andrew Sharp. Informed by hundreds of years of dark repertoire, Andrew's gloomy bass playing proved to be the final element to drive the trio's music into the warm, murky depths of sorrow.

A mostly acoustic trio drawing from the saddest parts of country, folk and rock, Nickel and Steel is here to ask - as Shirley Manson did - “… why does it feel so good to feel so sad?”