Nielsen, son of Cheap Trick guitarist, making own way
By Dave Hoekstra dhoekstra@suntimes.com December 24, 2010 12:42AM
Miles Nielsen, who grew up experiencing life in rock 'n' roll with his father, now has his own band, the Rusted Hearts.
PAPER ARROWS; MILES NIELSEN & THE RUSTED HEARTS
♦ 8 p.m. Monday
♦ Schuba’s, 3159 N. Southport
♦ $6
♦ (773) 525-2508; www.schubas.com
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Updated: May 17, 2012 3:23PM
The name does not ring a bell for the doorman at the Lodge at Four Lakes in Lisle.
Miles Nielsen and his band are playing the pub on a snowy December night at the west suburban ski lodge. The young doorman is told that Nielsen is the son of Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen.
He does not even know Cheap Trick.
Miles Nielsen, 35, would rather have it this way.
Like white pearls on New Year’s Eve, he has his own flair. Nielsen’s jangly folk-pop recalls R.E.M. and “Rubber Soul”-era Beatles more than the crunchy pop of Cheap Trick.
Miles Nielsen & the Rusted Hearts open Monday for the Paper Arrows at Schubas. Cheap Trick comparisons will be inevitable for Nielsen.
“When I was younger, maybe I had this chip on my shoulder with my dad,” Nielsen says before his set. “Now I spend so much time working with other musicians [the Texas Tornados’ Augie Meyers, bluesman Lonnie Brooks], half of them don’t even find out for a year or two. They go, ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ What am I going to say? ‘My dad is in Cheap Trick?’ How does that make a difference? If I can write songs, play my instrument and perform, that has no bearing on anything.”
Certainly, Nielsen couldn’t escape his father’s huge guitar collection. (He uses about 15 different guitars in any given Cheap Trick show.)
“Definitely all the instruments influenced me,” he says. “We had a music room from the time I was a kid. We’d bang around and didn’t know what we were doing. I was in middle school playing trumpet in a jazz band. I saw a guitarist play some stuff and told my dad I wanted to play guitar. I had a guitar the next day. It was a Greco Super Real Les Paul knockoff. I was 14, which was pretty old to pick up an instrument and make a career out of it.”
Nielsen decided to pursue music at age 15. He was playing Drivin’ ’n’ Cryin’, Material Issue and Cheap Trick covers at the Energy Nightclub in Rockford.
“A bunch of cute girls showed up,” he says. “You don’t really think about those things when you’re excited about music.”
He became a classical voice major at Illinois State University. He has released one solo album, “Miles,” (available at milesnielsen.com) with guest drummer Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick and Nielsen’s drummer brother Daxx X. His follow-up is being recorded with producer Justin Perkins in Milwaukee.
The only advice Rick Nielsen gave to his kids was to practice, practice, practice.
“If it was, ‘Dad, can you show me how to do this?,’ the answer would be no,” Rick Nielsen said on Wednesday, the day after his 41st wedding anniversary. “If they were really stumped, then they could come to me. That’s the only way you learn. I taught myself. Miles plays banjo, guitar, bass, harmonica, piano. Even the voice is an instrument. I didn’t teach him one of them.”
Miles Nielsen has surrendered to paying the dues.
Before the Lodge gig, he parks the band’s blue van in the snow. It is a 1992 Ford Club Wagon super van. It has 133,000 miles on it. The 15-passenger van used to belong to the Windsor Baptist Church in Rockford.
Nielsen figures he gets his wanderlust from growing up on the Cheap Trick tour bus.
“I would go for three or four weeks in the summer and not miss home,” he recalls. “The band taught me lessons about girls, playing poker, a lot of things I don’t do now. Poker is one of them. When I was 13, they all gave me $100 apiece. I had $400 and they proceeded to take $175 in a card game — and didn’t give it back. I learned about 52-Card Pickup. That was embarrassing.”
He pulled the same prank on Cheap Trick vocalist Robin Zander’s son.
“He was 15. I go, ‘You ever play 52-Card Pickup, Little Z?’ He goes, ‘No.’ I sprayed the cards all over the room and told him to go pick them up. Those are the things you have to pass on.”
These days, Rick Nielsen will sit in on some of his son’s shows. Somehow that doesn’t happen for Jakob Dylan.
“You have another guitar player who is itching to play, and it turns out it’s my dad,” Nielsen says. “It’s no different than a friend wanting to get up and jam a song.”
Nielsen also plays bass with acclaimed Americana artist Cory Chisel, based out of Appleton, Wis. And Nielsen and his band guitarist, Daniel James McMahon, are working on a soundtrack for a documentary about a struggling inner-city high school football team in Memphis for Spitfire Pictures, which produced Martin Scorsese’s “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.” The score is being recorded in studios in Madison, Wis., Milwaukee and Rockford.
Just like his father’s band, Nielsen remains loyal to Rockford.
“Things in Rockford are somewhat why I write the songs I write,” says Nielsen, a Rockford native. “You live in a town that’s struggling. It’s not the city’s fault. We’ve lost a lot to exporting and importing. But there’s a community of artists and people that are trying to do good stuff.”
Since 2005 Nielsen has lived in far west suburban Geneva. “It’s obviously Swedish, which lends itself to my roots,” he says. “I still call Rockford home. My folks still live there. My brother, my sister live there.”
Rockford’s working-class ethic has been a cornerstone of Nielsen’s songwriting process. He is meticulous about his craft. He explains, “I’ve always wanted to write songs that moved me, and I struggled with that. I figured out the guitar. I figured out how to put songs together. Then how to write lyrics. Finally, I feel I can put all of them together into being a songwriter. For a long time, it was like riffing in a jam space and then, ‘Let’s write some lyrics to it.’ Now, I have a theme and story prior to any thinking of what the riff is going to sound like.”
The Illinois Times in Springfield wrote that Nielsen’s songs were “much more mature and timeless than anything Cheap Trick ever put out.”
Nielsen tries to smile.
“It’s a compliment from one person’s opinion,” he says. “If that excites someone to come hear the songs or check out the record, then great. But I haven’t written ‘I Want You to Want Me.’ ‘Surrender.’ ‘Dream Police.’ Those are songs that were written over 30 years ago and they still hold up.
“We’ll see how my songs stack up in 30 years.”
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