Nick Choate, who died on Wednesday at 46 after a years-long struggle against cancer, told me this one time: “If you wanna get good, you have to just keep trying even when you feel like you suck. Eventually, you’ll figure out a new thing and get past the suck.”
This was in the spring of 2009, and we were at Blue Smoke, the Eastside studio he owned at the time. He was patiently giving me a guitar lesson because I wanted to learn how to play a basic blues progression, and having seen him vamp his way through various blues progressions and R&B classics on guitar and bass at the Moon Bar a few nights a week for a couple of years (usually as a sideman to Sam Anderson, Big Mike, Luke Wade, Josh Weathers, and plenty of other people I am forgetting), I figured he was the one to show me the ropes. He did his best. Even though I didn’t really get it, he said, “Don’t worry. You will.”
I think about that afternoon a lot — because I am still as bad at guitar as I was back then — but I did keep trying that spring and summer, hard enough to at least use the instrument as a songwriting tool. I remember running into him that fall and him asking how my guitar playing was going. I told him I sucked a little less, and he said, “That makes me happy.”
Other than his faith in Jesus, and his wife and children, nothing made Nick happier than music, specifically the shared experience of making it with others. When I met him in ’07 or ’08, he was this cocky dude of slight build, often draped in a Man With No Name poncho, who wore sunglasses indoors and always had on the hat. Ragged, made of straw, and folded into a crooked-angled taco shape — that was the cowboy hat Nick wore for a really long time, under which a mohawk (the sides of his head in a perpetual state of growing out), lurked like a funny Halloween decoration, a fake rabid squirrel rigged to pop out at you whenever he lifted his hat. What I remember most about him is that he was always enthusiastic — not in a hyperactive way but in a stoked-to-play-guitar-even-though-there’s-only-three-people-here sort of way. Back then, he had recently gotten sober, then about a year later, when he had quit smoking, then even drinking coffee, he told me he had gotten way into spicy food, because that was still thrilling but wasn’t bad for him. He always sang and played with so much heart and attitude — I think about him strutting the Moon’s stage, playing bass and belting out Johnny Lang’s “Rack ’Em Up,” as if Lang had been in the bar and needed to be shown how he should have done it.
Nick did not worry what you thought about him, but he was always interested in what you were up to, and he was always kind. He was also very funny, especially when it was something he was passionate about. I recall this other time I dropped by Blue Smoke to see if he could fix this vintage tape-echo thing I had acquired, and he was working on some Josh Weathers mixes or some such. His preferred recording software at that time was Logic Pro, so I asked him why he didn’t use ProTools, and he ranted about that for almost 10 minutes, that Hollywood film scores were recorded and mixed in Logic and that ProTools was practically a cult. It would have made a pretty hilarious Ted Talk at the time and probably would make a hysterically contentious viral TikTok now.
Above all, though, Nick was a follower of Jesus Christ. His faith in his savior was foremost in everything he did. After he married Michelle and became a father, it was obvious that he seemed genuinely excited by his relationship with Christ. I admired that Nick authentically lived his faith. Even before he got sick, Nick’s faith was as joyful as it was unshakeable. I think his growth in Christ mirrored how much he loved being a husband and a father. I remember seeing him a lot at various gigs, then a lot less, and I learned the reason for his disappearance was that he had fallen in love with this woman Michelle, whom he soon happily married. I think our social circles had spun farther apart by then, but in the occasional conversations we had in the ensuing years, I could tell just how truly blessed he felt. He was one of the most unabashedly grateful people I’ve ever known: grateful to God, grateful for his family, grateful for music.
I didn’t know Nick until he had gotten “good,” I suppose, so as far as I know, he was always like that. But in the time that we were friends, I was inspired by the way that a good man like him always strived to do better, that even when you stumble, God is good, and God is there for you. I’ll miss you, Nick. You were a wonderful human being. I hope you’re up there jamming with your heroes. I promise that I’ll get that blues part down one day.
