A Chat with Tom Meltzer About His First Solo Album Nice Things

ARTS & CULTURE

Tom Meltzer has accolades from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Esquire for his work in the band 5 Chinese Brothers, which had critical success over four albums, with tours and TV appearances.

Since the band’s breakup in 1999 and Meltzer’s relocation to the Triangle, he has continued to practice songwriting and musicianship in several bands and on compilation recordings.

In May 2026, Meltzer self-released the all-acoustic Nice Things, his first solo album.

The album is named after the first track, “Nice Things.”

“I chose that song as the title track because it sums up what a lot of the album is about: finding ways to cope with being an imperfect being in an imperfect world,” he wrote in an email to The Local Reporter.

Over 16 songs, Meltzer tells stories and tells them well.

There are no bells and whistles, no overproduction: only solid musicianship and well-crafted songs.

Instrumentation includes acoustic guitar, bass, resophonic guitar/dobro, twelve-string short-scale guitar, and mandolin. He plays all of them and can be heard on lead and harmony vocals.

In “Be Kind,” he sings: “Sometimes I’ve been unkind / Sometimes I haven’t been thoughtful / Sometimes I’ve just been blind / And sometimes I’ve been just awful.”

In his email, he noted, “‘Be Kind’ is mostly a reflection on my younger self’s bad behavior. That’s a recurring theme on the album… I write a lot about regret.”

The song ends, “Someday I’ll be gone / Don’t know what I’ll leave behind / If it’s just two words / I hope those words will be ‘be kind.’”

Meltzer’s influences range from John Prine, Paul Simon, Carole King, to Merle Haggard.

Nice Things is a country record, but not the kind you think. It’s about the sound of country, its human stories, not necessarily its cultural trappings. (“I never say ain’t except in songs I’m writing.”)

On his blog, he writes that he caught the country music bug in college and went down the rabbit hole of “American music’s back catalog.”

There’s not a lot of twang on this album, or the typical notes that bend like an old country road. Meltzer can sing ‘southern,’ although he doesn’t always. There’s still the phrasing, nasality, and storytelling of country. But these are not ‘country’ songs.

In “Country Song,” he sings:

Don’t give a damn about NASCAR or football games

But I love the sound of a mandolin

A D18 and good fiddlin’

And a harmony that’s pitched a third above

Yeah, I may not be country, but it’s country that I love

He considers today’s direct access to audiences liberating: “Anyone can record an album at home—which is what I did—and post the results directly to all the streaming services. Anyone can use social media to try to go viral and gain an audience.”

The AudioTechnica 4033a microphone he used is well-suited for acoustic recordings. He based the recording and mix of Nice Things on two records by Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark.

“They come about as close as possible to sounding like live performances. Everything is close-miked, clean, and only nominally processed.”

While the album intentionally embraces small-scale values, the songs aren’t lightweight. It’s an album of self-reflection and gentle commentary, memorializing some old loves and wanting to understand the world we live in now. There’s suffering, death, confession, humor, and personality.

Good stories need good lyrics, and Meltzer has a deft hand. “Black Suit and Tie” is a song about going to a friend’s funeral, which he hints lovingly at with lines such as:

Gonna see the old crowd, anyone who’s still around

We’ll swap some stories and tell some lies

Relive the days of jeans and t-shirts

Sitting there in our black suits and ties

If you’re tired of playlists made by machines or music made only for its commercial value, give Nice Things a listen. It will take you on a surprising journey.

Pamir Kiciman is an artist who writes about a range of the arts and the creative process. This reporter can be reached at: Information@TheLocalReporter.press.