Meeting Nick Tremulis
On giving back and paying forward
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
We’ve all watched Queen’s performance at Live Aid, considered by many to be one of the best moments in live rocknroll history. Live Aid was a concert to raise money for people in Africa who didn’t have enough food to eat. It was watched live by something like one in every five people on Earth and raised $100 million.
It was all organized by one guy, Bob Geldof who was in a band called the Boomtown Rats, which had a hit or two in the 80s. In other words, he wasn’t really anyone special. But he had an idea, and some chutzpah and got all of these amazing bands to perform for free and got just about everything — from the venue, to the plane tickets to bring the bands to London — donated. Every dollar raised basically went right to the charity.
I never met Bob Geldof.
But I did meet Nicholas Tremulis. He’s a Chicago musician and a mainstay of the scene here. As such, he knows a lot of other Chicago musicians. He and Jon Langford even hosted a radio show on WXRT. I got to hang in the studio one night as Frank Orrall of Poi Dog Pondering joined him and sang a few songs.
Like Geldof, he wanted to help people who needed food. So he started an annual benefit called The Waltz, after a famous concert film about the Band (with a capital ‘B’.)
It was a pretty massive undertaking and I was lucky to get to work with him on it for a couple of years via my Metro friends Jenny and Sharyl. And of course it was hosted by Joe Shanahan, Metro’s owner who is a massive supporter of Chicago, the music community and the community at large. Joe’s a mensch, too. I built the Web site and then documented the show itself. One year I also shot behind-the-scenes backstage and at rehearsal the night before at the Lakland Bass factory. Nick was warm, welcoming, friendly, appreciative and a pleasure to work with.
Legends played these shows like folks from Wilco, Mavis Staples, Ronnie Spector, Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins, Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople and Hubert Sumlin and David Johansen (more on them later).
They were great evenings, filled with music and camaraderie as well as unusual pairings like Billy Corgan and jazz singer Kurt Elling. The Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra served as the house band shifting genres and eras with finesse. Hosted at Metro, each show went way into the night and a lot of money was raised to fight hunger. Not $100 million, but a pretty nice check.
At the end of the day, Nick is just a good human. Plain and simple. He was in a position to do some good in the world and he did it.
I include him here because “giving back” is something I should be better about, too. But he did inspire me to not just give back buy pay forward, following his example. Perhaps I’ll tell that story a little later, too. He also had me shoot portraits (again at Lakland) of a super group he put together with Rick Rizzo (Eleventh Dream Day), John Stirratt (Wilco) and Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick) called Candy Golde.
No, he wasn’t a star the size of Geldof’s Rats. Nor could he pull off Live Aid. But whoever you are, and whatever scale you work at, you can make a difference in your community.
Nick is a stand-up guy for it.