Bottoms Up: Nashville Americana Songwriter Nick Nace Releases Music Video For His New Single ‘Last Call’

It’s an all too familiar scene: a lone man at a bar, drowning his sorrows in his beverage of choice. But the story behind his lingering presence may come as a surprise, especially for the bartender.

This is the premise of the music video for Nashville Americana artist Nick Nace’s brand new single, where he is waiting for “Last Call,” as it’s titled, to come around because he can’t seem to make himself leave.

The video, filmed at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge, represents “the intersection of two worlds in a surreal evocation of one man’s inner and outer life.” This is symbolized through the overlaying of the people around him, where he is on one visual layer and the phantom presence of other attendees mill around him unknowingly, drinking beside him and playing pool behind him. The reason for his residence on the bar stool, and the reason for the imagery of the ghostly people, are actually the same. In the story, he is missing his deceased wife, but the bartender is her doppelganger, which is why he sticks around.

“You remind me of martinis with my gorgeous wife, I still wear my wedding band, you look so much alike,” he confesses in a slow, steady cadence, almost as if the thoughts are tumbling out from the haziness of his tipsy trance.

The song aurally conveys his feelings of longing and grieving through his husky, distant vocals, and a constant eerie note being drawn out in the background. The drama intensifies in the last leg of the song, as the percussion and guitar ramp up for a final relief found when he declares “Last Call” for the last time.

Nace has been in the entertainment industry for a long time, but didn’t always think he would end up in music. The Ontario, Canada, native moved to New York City in the late 90’s—a bright-eyed, self-described drama kid fresh out of high school—to itch his acting bug. Not long after investing in a cheap blue guitar, however, he realized he would rather write his own words than be a conduit for someone else’s. He made the move to East Nashville at the end of 2015 and has been there ever since, collaborating with local peers and touring the globe.

An artistic jack of many trades, Nace also experiments with photography as a hobby. His feed is filled with images he has taken, ranging from double-exposure shots (quite like the music video) to black-and-white additions photographed on a Holga camera.