Musician Nicholas “Nicky Diamonds” Long has been through it. A contentious break from a major label that resulted in the breakup of his former band, Lonely Horse, a divorce and custody battle due in part to his devotion to that band, a move in 2018 to El Paso to give up music, then another damaging breakup that brought him back to San Antonio in 2020.
The result of all that trouble and life lessons learned is Perdido en La Salsa, a new seven-song album released Sunday under his performance moniker, Nicky Diamonds.
‘Good medicine’
The album title, Spanish for “lost in the sauce,” bespeaks Long’s sense of being overwhelmed by the vicissitudes of love and hard living, and song titles like “Back to Misery (Mizzouri)” and “Broken In Ways” evoke trials, tribulations and loss.
The slang phrase “lost in the sauce” can have multiple meanings, from losing sight of what’s truly important to “a whole lot of boozing,” as Long said. “And, you know, just the life of an artist, self-sabotage and all that stuff. Trying to find inspiration in pain and depression, and desperately needing therapy, but just drinking more.”
Though he tried to give up music during his El Paso stint, the drive to write songs never left him. With the impetus of heartbreak, Long returned to San Antonio and gathered himself enough to craft an album’s worth of new music and form a band.
“The record was good medicine for me to get over things and move on with my future in music,” he said.
That future is brighter thanks to the intervention of Willie Nelson. Long, onstage as Nicky Diamonds during a Feb. 25 show at The Lonesome Rose, recounted how Nelson saw his video for the song “Tirame un Paro” and invited him to perform as part of the Black Opry Records Revue at the 2023 Luck Reunion in Spicewood. Diamonds will return for this year’s Luck Reunion on March 14 to perform with Tami Neilson.
‘I am country’
Lonely Horse was renowned for its heavy rock ‘n’ roll sound, but Long embraced the country idiom for his new record.
“I grew up in the country,” he said of growing up on a couple of acres tending ponies in the Oak Cliff side of Dallas. “I am country.”
Long said he’s always written country songs. “I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church. We sang old Irish hymns, and country music and Irish music are one and the same thing.”
Pedal steel guitar washes and waltz time underscore Long’s lilting melodies and high-key vocals in the country lament “Back to Misery (Mizzouri),” about leaving San Antone, and the uptempo “Ballad of the Lonesome Rose” makes a fine tune for dancing, while “Rock of Ages” starts with the inimitable Diamonds voice singing alone along to finger-picked acoustic guitar before exploding into an echoey canyon of high lonesome sound.
With the album release scheduled for Sunday on all streaming platforms and the vinyl LP due out in June, the 36-year-old songwriter is officially back on his horse. Soon, he’ll ride off in the opposite direction of the sunset, heading east to try his fortunes in Nashville.
If his luck holds, Long will find new audiences and appreciation for his songwriting skills. And as with a star like Nelson hearing his song, Long said, “You just kind of write something that’s real to you and you put it out there and you never know who’s listening.”
