For his third offering as a singer/songwriter, “Summer Lovin’,” country artist Nick Lusk has produced a soft, fun, dreamy love song for a woman, a time and a place, a song full of acoustic guitar as sweet as any you can hear anywhere.
“I just wanted a feel-good song,” said Nick. “There’s nothing too deep about it, it’s just feeling good, having fun, laid back, not a care in the world. That’s what I was trying to get with that song.”
The woman is nameless, the place is his rural hometown in southern West Virginia, and the time, of course, is summer.
The song is like a mellow summer night painted in vocals with an R&B vibe and set to country guitar.
“From your high school sweethearts and growing up through adulthood, it seems like summer is what brings people together. That’s where your crushes start, the way that people act with summer here,” he said.
The woman in the song may be nameless, but Nick had one particular woman in mind.
“For me, personally, I wrote this song because I fell in love with my now fiancée in summer.”
This backyard fire sure is glowin’, embers on the ground
Singin’ our favorite tunes now, my favorite sound
I’m just wonderin’ what you’ve got goin’ on in your mind
When July comes on around girl, Imma make you mine
The opening verse introduces all the players in the universe that Nick wants to celebrate. It’s not, in this song, three separate loves. It is one love in three parts, but it’s the summer part that wraps its arms around the other two.
“I was trying to capture the persona of summer. The love of summer here, you know, it’s a different world for people here.”
Oceana is a town of about 1,500 people strung out along the mountain valley of Clear Fork in the coalfields of West Virginia. The nearest Walmart is an hour away, 40-odd miles on state highways.
“You’re almost trapped in a way. Winters can be brutal, but it changes whenever summer comes around, and what I was trying to capture with the song is there’s not a care in the world in the summer because you, your neighbors, your friends, everybody’s together.”
And, being a rural area, a very rural area, “We rely on other people for entertainment. You just make your own atmosphere.”
“Summer Lovin’” is the second song Nick has released this year. “Alive” is a more purely love song. “Your Lies,” released last year, is a love-gone-wrong song. Both have an R&B vibe in the beat and in his voice, which he attributes to the influence R&B had early in his life.
“I started this music journey back when I was 13, 14. I started off really influenced by R&B music, and I tried to go down that path, but I just didn’t feel like it was authentic to me. With this area the country music, the country style, is what connects with people.”
“Vocal wise, I still carry on with that R&B influence, but I grew up with country instrumentals. I grew up playing guitar and picked up piano probably seven, eight years ago.”
The first song he ever released, back in 2023, was a piano instrumental version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman,” a beautiful cover of one of the oldest Christmas songs.
“I grew up pretty religious,” he said. “My family went to church, and that’s really what started my music journey. That song was a tribute to my grandfather. It was his favorite song. I just sat down one day on the piano, and I just wanted to make a beautiful song that everybody knows.”
He plans to release another single, “Hometown Echoes,” which will be the title track of an EP he wants to release next month.
His career ambition is not to leave his rural piece of West Virginia. It is, really, to pick some of it up musically and give it to the rest of the world.
“I would love that,” he said. There’s a lot of good people here, a lot of great relationships, and it’s a beautiful place to write music. There’s just so much inspiration in folks here.”
Enjoy a West Virginia summer night and connect to Nick Lusk on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
“Summer Lovin’”:
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