Interview: Edwin "Tony" Nicholas - Songwriter and Producer

The production discography of Edwin “Tony” Nicholas reads like a “Who’s Who of R&B” – Teddy Pendergrass, Patti LaBelle, Barry White, Regina Belle, Gerald Levert, Tamia, and Joe Thomas, along with The Backstreet Boys, L.S.G and The O’Jays. And with two decades of experience, the veteran songwriter and producer has became famous for his entrepreneurial talents as well. Since its inception, Nicholas’ Cleveland studio, The Reel Thing, has become an oasis for established singers long-neglected by the contemporary music industry.

Taking a break from a studio session, “Tony” Nicholas managed to squeeze some time out of his busy schedule and settle down for an interview with Clayton Perry – reflecting on his songwriting partnership with Gerald Levert, the enduring power of a ballad, and the future of R&B music.
Before making a name for yourself in the music world, you spent four years as a touring musician. What particular memories that shine bright from those early years?

For a fairly brief period, I was a musical director for a group called Teen Dream that was signed to Warner Bros. They had one album out in the mid-eighties; I want to say ’86, somewhere in there. And I worked with them. The lead singer couldn’t stop getting pregnant. And because the group was called Teen Dream… [laughing]

Right, right! [laughing]

…and Warner Bros. decided that, that wasn’t a good look for them and dropped the group. And also in that period, my songwriting partner at the time was a cat name Foley. And in somewhere around ’86, ’87, Foley got a call from Miles Davis. And so he left to go play with Miles Davis. But that’s what I was doing in that period. With LeVert, they had a studio and I was writing a lot of music and had really no idea what I was going to do with the music. But I just kept writing it, and a lot of that music got released when I started writing with Gerald. Even though I was writing full songs, he didn’t use the lyrics, because he wrote lyrics. So he took the tracks and wrote his own lyrics to them. And a lot of those songs became some of the songs that he and I started doing together later.

I know that you graduated from Denison with a B.A. in music. What led you to Denison? And how did college prepare you for life in the music industry?

I would say the biggest thing, and not the only thing, but the most significant thing to me is that studying music in college forced me to pick genres that I never would have paid any attention to, had I not had to. And so, I had to study opera and a lot of classical. And I thought, at the time, that, that stuff was sort of a waste of my time. But those experiences became really, really helpful when I started having to arrange string and horn parts on my own records, because I had some idea of what those things were supposed to do. And just a knowledge of world instruments and what they were; you know, like a kalimba, how they’re supposed to play. There’s a lot of different things that I understood based on having consumed that music because I was forced to. That stuff really, really made a difference. And especially just in being a musical director. I think that if you’re an artist and you know you’re going to be an artist, and that’s what you plan to do, then maybe college doesn’t necessarily have to do that. But if you’re a musician and you don’t know what avenue your career is going to take, then it becomes really useful to be versed in a lot of different things. I was a musical director for the Soul Train Awards one year, like ’95 or something like that. Stuff like that, for example, when you’ve got to write out horn charts and things of that sort, had I not gone to school, I wouldn’t have been able to do.

Article Author: Clayton Perry

Over the past few years, Clayton Perry has interviewed some of the BIGGEST entertainers in music, film and television. Check out his digital archive with 180+ definitive conversation pieces.

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