Texas A&M Student Nico Rey Shares Songs From New Album ‘An Endless Conversation’
Nico Ruiz Barnes, an alternative-rock artist whose stage name is Nico Rey, performed songs from the new album “An Endless Conversation” during a recent Performance Series event at the Black Box Theater in the Liberal Arts and Arts and Humanities Building.
The series is hosted by the School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts and organized by Dr. Matthew Campbell, assistant program director for Performance Studies. Rey, whose pronouns are they/them, previously performed during the series in the fall.
“When I first saw Nico perform, I thought, ‘This kind of music is happening on campus?’” Campbell said. “This sweet dulcet-toned artist, who reminds me of my favorite songwriters from the ’70s and the ’90s, all simultaneously. Their performance made me reevaluate what the indie-rock scene might be in Bryan-College Station.”
Rey, a junior economics student, joined the TAMUSIC club on campus during the Spring 2023 semester, which is advised by Dr. Will Connor, Performance Studies lecturer. Rey is also in the Sonic Improvisation course taught by Connor.
During the Performance Series, Rey played guitar and piano and sang each track from the album, along with songs from “Briarwood,” a first EP release in 2023. Rey said music has been a constant since childhood.
“When I was singing as a small kid, I felt like I was doing what I should be doing in life,” Rey said. “I grew up singing in church and I didn’t know songwriting was a thing, because I really only listened to music I heard at church.”
At 10, Rey’s brother played the song “The A-Team” by Ed Sheeran, and Rey realized how stories could be told in a song. Rey learned to play the piano, ukulele and guitar. The path to writing and recording music was also inspired by Elliott Smith and his albums “Either/Or” and “Figure 8.”
“I felt like I had to release ‘Briarwood’ and tell my story,” Rey said. “Especially with this next album, every time I wrote a song it felt like a burden coming off me. It was a new feeling. I was writing songs as I felt inspired, and when I wrote them down, I just knew I had to record them.”
Working on both albums while still being in school had its challenges. On Saturdays, Rey would wake up at 5 a.m. and drive to Dallas to record as many songs as possible, then drive back to campus the same day.
“I made time to make it happen,” Rey said. “With ‘An Endless Conversation,’ I feel like it was something that I wanted other people to hear, and it is also something that is just a big creative release for me.”
Rey said the new album is about “internal musings,” and that the album title was inspired by a philosophy class.
“My philosophy professor said, ‘Philosophy is like an endless conversation throughout history,’ and I wrote that down right away,” Rey said. “I thought to myself, ‘I feel that. That feels like my life.’ So the album is about different little images of where I was last year and how I felt. It’s sort of the process of growth as a person, and how it can feel like you are always going in a circle.”
Rey plans to pursue a master’s degree in economics and continue making music. Campbell said the Performance Series was an ideal avenue for Rey to “see a packed house,” and perform the new album.
“This is the kind of art scene that I would want to see,” Campbell said. “This is the kind of show that I would like to see happening on a corner outside the LAAH building. I want there to be support on an institutional level for artists to be able to do something like this to get their start. I am hoping that, as the School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts, we can provide the institutional support for these kinds of rites of passage for new artists, so that performances like these are a feature rather than a rarity.”
Top photo: Nico Rey performs during the recent Performance Series at the Liberal Arts and Arts and Humanities Building. Photo by Bailey Brown.
