ROCK IN DETROIT’S
MARCH 2026
BAND OF THE MONTH:
NIC STEVENS
Musical jack-of-all trades, Nic Stevens was a founding member and vocalist for Movies in The Morning. Leaving after two albums and two tours, Nic worked as hired gun, playing with artists such as Brenden Starr, with whom he completed two extensive tours. Following that, Nic has focused on molding his solo career, playing in venues across the Midwest, writing original music, and booking shows. Rock in Detroit recently spoke with Nic about his his many roles as a Michigan musician.
ROCK IN DETROIT: So where are you from?
NIC: I say Flint, but Grand Blanc to be specific. Never really ventured outside of the bubble, besides touring all over the country for that.
ROCK IN DETROIT: Tell us about touring. Where have you gone?
NIC: I’ve done two Midwest runs like Chicago, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, but I also did an East Coast run and that went through Virginia, down to North Carolina. I played Biloxi Mississippi and Nashville. It’s hard to remember, but, the second to last tour, we started in Pennsylvania, went down through North Carolina, Georgia, played Biloxi, Mississippi and then did the tour in Nashville, so that was quite a hike home.
ROCK IN DETROIT: What were the formats of these tours?
NIC: So the last couple I’ve done, let me go back further–the first couple tours I did were with my original band, Movies in the Morning. I was the lead vocalist and one of the founders of that band. Following that, I started doing hired gun work for a gentleman named Brendan Star in Pennsylvania, so the last two tours I’ve done were actually me flying out to Pennsylvania, getting in their van and then being on the tour with them. We had one rehearsal the day before the tour, went through all the songs together and off we went. It’s definitely stressful. It’s not what I was used to. My first band was rehearsing for years on end building up to this, like, “Oh my God! We’re going on tour!” But with this you get a couple months to learn your songs, we’ll see you when it happens, like, figure it out.
ROCK IN DETROIT: How many years have you been doing this?
NIC: Going on three. I played locally mostly to start, like around Michigan, and then the first tour with my original band was a Midwest run, and then we did an East Coast run with Scotty Austin of Saving Abel. That was probably July of 2024 – that was my first tour. December was the run with Scotty Austin, and so I’ve been going at it about three years in total.
ROCK IN DETROIT: What genre do you consider yourself?
NIC: This project, my solo stuff, is like alt rock, kind of like Switchfoot, or like real heavy down-tuned guitar, but still with the bright vocals over the top – I’m not much of a screamer. Melodic vocals. Real heavy guitar. The hired gun thing with Brendan Star, that’s like a pop sound. It’s definitely different from what I’m used to. And my first band was new metal, so it’s all kind of varying around hard rock somewhat, but that’s what I’m kind of trying to streamline towards with my own project, like real hard, heavy guitar, bright vocals, probably have a few acoustic songs in there to change it up. But, I’ve always appreciated the early 2000s sound. I know it’s kind of corny, but like “Butt Rock” and stuff like that is kind of cool.
ROCK IN DETROIT: What are the influences for this current project?
NIC: I would definitely say there’s some elements of Silver Chair, Tool . . . You won’t see that in the single specifically, but the demo that’s coming out, it’s really abundant. Sabbath–they’re a huge influence. Ozzy solo stuff. The vocal production work on this is supposed to emulate what Ozzy would’ve tried to do with the double vocals–because I don’t consider myself the best vocalist in the world, but I know when I’m in key and out of key, so I always try to sing in key and put a little producer magic on it or on my heavy guitar, and it turned out pretty decent. The EP will probably be coming out maybe March, but the singles will be done much before then. I have shirts, stickers, all that crapola. Being a solo artist, I try to hone back as much as possible, because at this point I don’t keep a physical inventory of merchandise. People can order it and they’ll get made then and we’ll ship it out. A little more pricey, but it saved me from sitting on hundreds of shirts. At least for the time being. I’ll probably order some when I tour next year.
ROCK IN DETROIT: How did you get started playing guitar?
NIC: Quite honestly it was like, I was inspired by Freddie Mercury and Queen–that was always my inspiration growing up and still is. Everything I do is left-handed, but my guitar teacher wanted me to play right-handed. He figured it would benefit me more down the road. My passion started with Queen even though it’s mostly like melodic piano, there’s not that much guitar in it. My influence for heavy music came in when I started playing with the new metal band. Before that I was like, “Eww, Metal!” It was like Classic Rock until I die. But I’ve since converted so now I prefer hard rock and metal more than I like classic rock. Classic rock is kind of boring to me at this point.
ROCK IN DETROIT: What area are you going to tour next year?
NIC: It is to be determined, but we’re thinking down the East Coast again, maybe down to Florida and then kind of go West over toward Arizona and California.
ROCK IN DETROIT: Check out New Mexico, that’s where I’m from.
NIC: Oh nice! I booked a venue in Pueblo, New Mexico once.
ROCK IN DETROIT: Really? That’s funny. That’s a nowhere town.
NIC: That’s what I was told. It was called like Uncle Mike’s something, like a DIY type of place, the guy was Uncle Mike, the friendliest dude. Very accommodating to the band and apparently they sold a lot of merch, so people were supportive of what’s going on. I had never heard of it before. That’s crazy to me. I’ve never even been remotely close to there, but I booked a show there. I’m sure one day I’ll go check it out, see what it’s all about. So it’s either that, or we focus on the Midwest.
ROCK IN DETROIT: What do you do for lodging while you’re traveling?
NIC: It varies. On these last two tours, it’s mostly been sleeping in the van, which I do not really enjoy, but it’s tour life. So I find a rest stop, crash, wake up real early, head to the venue, drink beers in the parking lot till load in. But the first two tours it was pretty much hotels every single night, which can get expensive. But I’m good about budgeting, we kept it under $100 a night for two rooms. There were only bedbugs in half the places, so . . . . You’ll find along the way, there’s some places that are super accommodating, even if it’s like a closet to sleep in, if it’s free, it’s better than nothing, especially as a touring band. It gets tough.
I just got back from the end of the tour where I basically drive to Louisville and there was no sound tech, so the show didn’t end up happening. So I drove over to Cincinnati, and this was the venue, so we sat there for about four hours and none of the doors ever opened and nobody ever showed up, so we drove home. That’s the kind of shit that can happen to bands on the road, especially when the venue writes you a check for a couple grand, it’s like they’re indebted to you to put something on. But when it’s a local-type show, even when it’s a touring band, the owners pretty much are like, “If I turn the lights on, I lose money. If I keep it closed it’s gonna be the same, so.” As an artist, you gotta make it so it’s enticing for them to even want to put on a show. It’s as simple as that. That’s why when I book a show I always find the local bands myself. I’ll make the poster–I’ll do anything to make it easier on the venue. It’s tough because there’s an increasing amount of venues closing around the country. A lot of it is because there’s not a consistent stream of people coming to live shows. There’s the argument that it’s the venue’s fault, or the band’s fault . . . It’s just, you know . . . I always say that the venues need to do a better job of promoting and, as a band playing original music, the venue is expecting you to bring in some people, even if it’s five people, you know, your mom, your aunt, whoever it is. You show that you at least tried. But if four bands try, you got 20 to 30 people there, then everybody’s buying a couple drinks. Unfortunately, more and more there will be four bands and they’re all expecting the others to put in the work of bring people in the door. Nobody’s actually putting the work in. So you just show up and one band will bring 20 people and nobody else will bring in anybody, or nobody brings in anybody at all, and three of the bands leave, so you’re just playing in front of the bartenders.
ROCK IN DETROIT: Music life.
NIC: Exactly.
ROCK IN DETROIT: There must be an easier way to tour . . . .
NIC: I don’t know if I mentioned this to you earlier, but I think this could benefit a lot of artists. I’m working on building an app, and it’s called Musicians Show Pro after my booking agency. What it is, is just a database of venues and it’s got tour routing features, it’s got where you click on each venue, it’s got their booking information, you can click on a button and it will take you to the nearest hotels, it will take you to the nearest airports. And then there’s even features where when you’ve built up a tour you can click an AI poster generator. It’s just a quick poster with your dates you can throw on your story or whatever. Right now we’re at 210 venues, but my goal is to have it basically built up by musicians where any of us can go in there, add a venue, delete a venue, leave a comment, to where my hope is that from a year from it’s at 1000 venues. We’re up to 125 users but it’s mostly people just checking it out, seeing what it’s about, nobody’s actually adding or contributing much yet.
ROCK IN DETROIT: That’s really cool. I have no idea how to build an app.
NIC: Well, it’s made much easier through one of those AI app building platforms where you basically just give it prompts. When it started it was complete crap, it was glitching, nothing worked–but I slowly went through and tested everything and fixed little stuff. Sure, it had the airports feature. But you would click on it, and say you had a venue in Detroit, it would show you Detroit, and the three airports. But when you clicked on a venue in Nebraska, it would still show you the three Detroit airports–it wouldn’t update. So I just prompted it that it needed to update every time your click on a new venue. So now it will automatically update. At this point it’s completely free for everyone to use.
ROCK IN DETROIT: Are you actively booking right now? If a band needed shows, how does that work?
NIC: So, I’m different from some other bookers in that I don’t keep a roster of bands and I don’t take commission. I take a set rate from artists. It varies from $50 to $100 per show based on circumstances. It basically works out, like if you were to hit me up and say, “Hey, Nic. we want to go on tour, we want a show in Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee on these dates.” I go, OK. Pitch to these venues, see what comes in, and send that back to the artist who gives the final OK on the venue. Then the same thing goes towards local bands. I reach out to them, try to see who’s interested. Send them back to the band I’m working with, they give the final OK, I give my suggestions, and away they go. I’m very honest in the sense of like, if you’re going out of state for the first time, there’s gonna be nobody there unless we’re going to put in some good local bands and they’re going to bring in people. But, the mistake so many artists make is that they want to headline so they can say, “Oh, hey, we’re ‘headlining’ in Chicago.” But what happens is, even if you do a great job and bring local bands and bring in people, by the time you play, these people have left. So what I now recommend is like if it’s your first time out state, or even on your first couple times, even though we’re gonna call it a “Headlining Tour,” we’re going to put you in the middle of the lineup because you’re going to play in front of much more people that way. Even locally, trying to get my friends and family to come out to shows, they’d much rather come see me play at 7:30 pm or 8:00 pm than they would at 11:00 pm. Back when I first started, it was great, but now they want it to be convenient. You got to make it convenient for people to try and build an audience.
ROCK IN DETROIT: Where do you see yourself in five years?
NIC: Ideally, I’d like to be to a place–I know it’s different for everybody–but to where I’m making what I am at my day job and that way, working in an insurance office full time, and then doing shows at night, and going tour, it’s kind of a lot to manage. Ideally, I’d like to play full time. I’ve actually started a booking company to try and kind of help some of the income. Quite honestly, I can sit at a computer and make more money booking shows at this point than I can actually playing shows. That’s the reality of it, once you count in your cost of gas and food, travel, and all that stuff. Sit at home, make $100 a show, clicking away. But ideally, I’d like it to be more playing shows as opposed to booking shows. Even if it’s three, four nights a week, and I’m still at my day job, I’m cool, you know? In five years, it will hopefully be a consistent income. I think it’s hard for a lot of artists. But I’m trying to get to that point. There are varying ways of doing that. Like, you and I can go out, sit there, play four hours of covers, you know, and you walk out on your merry way. That’s not fulfilling for me or a lot of other artists, just going out and doing the grind of three hours of music. People always ask me, “How do you make money right away?” and I say, “Go do it!” Go to a bar, play three or four hours of covers. Bring your own PA. You’ll get a guarantee, they don’t care how many people you bring in. You’re going out to play original music, you’re getting a door deal, unless they know about you, you know? Followers and all that crap is bought and paid for these days. Some bands are like, “Oh, I’ve got 50,000 followers!” and five people come in the door. It’s like, yeah . . .
ROCK IN DETROIT: How many tracks are on the CD you gave us?
NIC: That is just one, that’s the debut single. I have another song with a different producer and is mixed by somebody else that is a lot more polished. The rest of it is going to be done with the same person so it has a consistent sound. Probably get the first song that I did rerecorded, that way it’s all a consistent radio edit.
ROCK IN DETROIT: Are you looking to put out a full album eventually?
NIC: What I’m going to do next year is put out a 4 to 6 song EP and then in a year or two following that would be the album, but I plan on next year in June to tour on the EP, with my friends in Yellow #5. They’re from Ohio, a bad ass band. Ideally, I’d like to put out a full album but it will probably be a few years.
ROCK IN DETROIT: Cool! We’ll look for it!
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