Falling Flat
By Emily Overholt
Nick Grieco woke up at 5 on Sunday. No, not 5 a.m. wakeup of someone who is frantic or worried. No, it was 5 p.m.
“It makes me feel unproductive — like a noncontributing zero,” he said. “I know I should be doing a lot more with my life but … the fact that I’m also miserable makes it that much more difficult to give myself a reason to continue pushing myself to a new path.”
The 25-year-old left stable money last fall as a waiter to create and manage Allston Rock City Hall, a performance space overseen by Studio 52. It was a big goal, but setbacks from permitting, construction, and the city of Boston delayed the opening over and over.
At the March 29 launch party, what was supposed to be a concert was recast as an art opening. The amplifiers have been off since. After six months of fruitless battling with the Allston Civic Association to get permits for live music, he found himself out of a job.
“We went through all these motions,” he said. “I put myself through hell. I lost sleep for six months and I was really stressed about it. And then all of a sudden, when I got laid off, we were projecting that nothing is going to happen [in terms of permitting] for another year.”
This isn’t the first time Grieco has found himself in a bad situation. Since dropping out of Berklee College of Music at 19 to tour with his band at the time, he has been close to success but never quite made it.
The spiral to 5 p.m. wakeups started in 2010 when his then-band, Attack This City, lost their label weeks before getting onto Warped Tour. Then his production company, So I Heard Productions, lost their studio. Then he was evicted and slapped with $6,000 of his roommates’ debt.
“Every time I just kind of brush it off and every single time it gets harder to brush off,” he said. “It feels like I’m doing something wrong, but at the same time, everyone is telling me I’m doing something right.”
Creating ARCH was supposed to fix all that: the steady money, the home-grown aesthetic, and the impact on the Boston music scene would make up for past defeats.
Grieco said the failures come with the territory of a business based on tastes and personalities, even if many of them feel arbitrary and unwarranted.
“It’s the music industry, its dealing with volatile situations, volatile people,” he said. “And every time I work my way up I work a little bit higher and I push myself a little bit harder so it makes it that much harder when I fail because didn’t I work my ass off to prevent this from happening?”
Grieco’s band The Field Effect has been one of the only constants in his life since he joined as a guitarist and vocalist in fall of 2012. But even their progress has stagnated. After recording an album in January, they have not been able to release it in part because of the turmoil Grieco had been facing.
He said The Field Effect’s flat-line is intentional, but even if it wasn’t, even with all the other aspects of music that keep shutting him down, performing is the goal.
“I’m a performing artist,” he said. “I’m meant to be touring actively. That’s where I find solace — in what I do and writing music. I’m not going to retire. I’m not going to decide one day, maybe you should try something else.”
In many ways Grieco is fighting for success in a city that isn’t helping. As his peers flee to more successful music towns in Texas, Tennessee, California, and New York, he keeps picking himself up and fighting forward.
“Everything that I represent has to do with the city,” he said. “My band is here, at one point my business was here. So now that it’s not I would say I have less of a reason to stay here but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up.”
And he’s not giving up, even if the fight back to business is mostly reminding him of the ARCH debacle. A recent inquiry about a job opening ended with an interview about the internal drama of the venue instead of his qualifications for the position. He still hasn’t heard back.
But for now, he’s stalling, watching professional video game tournaments until the early hours of the morning, sleeping until the evening, and practicing songs from records that may never be released, wondering when Boston is going to knock him down next.
