I’ve known George Charles Nelson III for about four years now. He’s an old school East-Coast kind of guy, a trained fighter actually, but he’s also a soft hearted poetic type.
He’s been vegan pretty much for forever. From his little house in Salt Lake City he grows tomatoes, and has two chihuahuas—one is over 20 years old and the other is close to it. By day he works in a mental hospital, by night, most nights, he sings and plays one of his vintage guitars.
George is a quiet guy, but once you get to know him he loves to talk; he’s an open book. He’s been through a lot: a broken heart, a divorce; his job takes infinite patience and compassion. All of this shows in his music. There is no better man than George to write an album called, Millennial Love Songs—he’s just singing about his life.
“I like to focus on the surface stuff on a more in-depth level,” George says when I ask him the motivation behind his new album. His song Hide and Seek is about “young love, the kind where you know each other for a very long time, and what it’s like to lose that,” he says. “The type of childhood love that has changed, or maybe you were meant to lose it.”
In his heart touching way, George sings, “how time takes away everything, funerals to wedding rings, no one knows me like you do.” His song, Cracks In The Sky, addresses how young people experience the world primarily through a cell phone, getting their validation through a screen. George believes young people need to reinvest in person to person interaction. His live shows make this very evident, as he is a dynamic performer. His songs rise and fall in volume and intensity to convey the intended emotion very directly. I’ve not only heard George play on packed stages, but I’ve also heard his sing just for me in his living room. Either way is great.
George is proud to call Salt Lake City his home, he believes strongly in the local music community; SLC should be proud of George too. He does a couple of tours a year, and I know he’s making people feel something … maybe even long enough to put down their phones, or to fall in love, even if that love is meant to be lost somewhere along the way.
Look for George Charles Nelson III on Spotify, Facebook, and all the places where music is found online. You can catch him performing with Tom Bennett and Rooster on February 10 at Johnny’s on Second at 9 pm.
