Nix excited to be performing in festival

PHIL CAMPBELL — Brody Nix tried guitar lessons when he was younger but stopped taking them when he was about 11.

Years later, after graduating from high school and college, he picked up the guitar again. He struggled at first until someone showed him three chords — G, C and D.

“I eventually just got where I could play those three chords, and it opened the world up,” Nix said.

About seven years later, the 26-year-old Phil Campbell native writes his own songs and performs with the Brody Nix Band. This week, he will perform at the Franklin County Watermelon Festival for the first time.

Nix, who lives in the East Franklin community, said he expects to perform with guitarist Dustin Hargett rather than the full band. Their set will include a mixture of country, gospel and original music.

Nix said the Watermelon Festival will be the largest festival where he has performed so far. “I’m so excited about it,” he said.

When Nix returned to the guitar, he said he only hoped to learn enough to play around the house and with his friends.

After learning his first few chords, Nix said he believes one of the first songs he learned to play was “I Saw the Light.” It took him longer to learn to sing while playing.

The first song he remembers being able to sing and play at the same time was “Time Marches On.”

His favorite guitar is a 2003 Washburn he bought for $50 through Facebook Marketplace. The guitar needed work when he bought it, but a friend connected him with someone who repaired it at no charge.

Now covered in stickers, the Washburn remains his favorite, although electrical problems have temporarily kept him from playing it.

“I just love the way it feels,” Nix said.

Music is not his full-time job. Nix drives a concrete truck for USA Ready Mix after previously doing storm work that kept him away from home.

He said changing jobs has allowed him to spend more time with his wife and two daughters and devote more time to music. Nix’s first public performance came at Pleasant Hill Church in the East Franklin community when he was about 23. He sang “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”

“I was so excited about it, but I was so nervous,” he said. “I could hardly look up. I just stayed looking at my lyrics and playing.”

Nix said he still gets more nervous performing at church than anywhere else.

“It’s worship, and it’s something I take more seriously,” he said. He also enjoys playing for entertainment and seeing how people respond.

“My favorite part is seeing folks out there laugh and clap and just seeing people enjoy themselves,” Nix said. “I love entertaining people.”

He especially enjoys seeing children dance while the band plays.

“That just tickles me,” he said.

His first performance outside church came at Twin Forks campground, where he and other musicians played from a trailer for about an hour and a half to two hours.

Nix said performing gives him a rush that can last well after he leaves the stage.

“I guess I just feel fired up,” he said. “It just gets my adrenaline going.”

He said he has known the other musicians in the Brody Nix Band through church and the community for most of his life. The group includes Jeff Copeland on bass and harmony vocals, Jasper Copeland on drums, Kellie Hargett on harmony and lead vocals, and Dustin Hargett on lead guitar. Clay Morgan played rhythm guitar before leaving the group after becoming a game warden.

Nix said his songwriting ideas often come from his life, family, and people he encounters.

“Something will catch my eye, and I think there’s a song in that,” he said.

Sometimes a song comes together in minutes, Nix said. Others stay unfinished much longer.for example, he said he recently completed a song that had remained in his phone notes for a year and a half to two years.

Only one of his original songs has been recorded and released so far. “Carly’s Song” was written for Carly Weeks, a lifelong friend who died. Nix was working in Arkansas when Weeks died and began writing about what he was feeling.

“I can’t remember meeting Carly,” he said. “Carly’s one of those people that was just there my whole life.”

He recorded the song at The Nutt House in Sheffield with Jimmy Nutt playing guitar while Nix sang.

Nix said he initially wrote the song without expecting to release it. His mother later shared it with Weeks’ mother, who liked it, and Nix began occasionally performing it for others.

Nix said his perspective on the song changed during a fishing trip to Okeechobee, Florida. He was playing guitar one evening when his father asked him to play “Carly’s Song.” A man fishing with the group began to cry.

The man told Nix the song reminded him of a longtime friend who had died. The two had taken fishing trips together for decades, and after his friend’s death, it had taken him a long time to return.

“That was kind of my turning point where I realized that song could be for other people that didn’t have any insight to why I would write it,” Nix said.

He said he hopes people who knew Weeks think of her when they hear the song, and that others think about people they have loved.

“I just hope people think about their loved ones, and it helps them get through tough times,” he said.

Nix hopes eventually to record more of his songs, although he does not have a timetable for another release. Recording an album is one of his longterm goals. “I have so many songs that I have held up,” Nix said. “I’d love to get them out where people can hear them, and maybe they’ll like them as much as I do.”

Even if they did not, he said recording the songs would give him something to share with his children and grandchildren.

Nix said “Carly’s Song” will be among the original music he performs with Hargett at the Watermelon Festival.

He said he has attended the festival throughout his life, and his father once grew giant watermelons.

“It’s huge to me,” Nix said. “My whole life, I’ve loved going there.”

He said he hopes this year’s performance could lead to an opportunity for the full band to return in the future.

“I never could have thought I’d be playing there,” Nix said. “I sure didn’t think that three years into playing that I’d have a chance to play there. But I’m so excited about it.”