A multi-instrumentalist from the Piedmont, Nick Hallman is a life-long devotee of old-time country music indigenous to the South Carolina. As founding member of the Nickpickers, Hallman assembled one of the premier bands in the state that consistently features South Carolina Piedmont traditional music as it was played at the turn of the century. It is a musical tradition that uniquely blends Scotch-Irish and West African musical styles.
Though you’ll usually catch him playing fiddle, mandolin, bass or spoons, Hallman plays upwards of twenty instruments to bring to life the Appalachian fiddle and dulcimer tunes, cotton mill songs, Piedmont blues, old time gospel, country comedy songs, and Celtic tunes and waltzes that you’ll regularly find on the Nickpickers’ concert program. As former director of the South Carolina Folk Music Festival, and a familiar face as judge and emcee of folk music events in the region for over twenty-five years, Nick Hallman has been an energetic advocate of South Carolina’s musical heritage.
Presently he is serving as a volunteer consultant on the Piedmont Harmony Project, an initiative of the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism’s Heritage Corridor. Hallman received the Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Award in 1998.
