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Joe Shaver and Bobby Bare, and others. I began writing for Tree Publishing, which is now Sony
Music Publishing, and I was a staffer for 15 years, and I've continued to write songs for a living.

BiTS: When did you actually start writing songs?
How old were you when you did the first song of

yours that was perhaps performed and published?

GN: Probably 1970. I got a record deal, and we
made two albums with that group, and then I had
a few songs covered by other people in the 70s,
but I became very active as a songwriter, having
my songs recorded after I moved to Nashville in
1980.

BiTS: I gather, just to digress for a moment, I
gather you're getting an award at the end of this
month, is that right?

GN: An award at the end of this month?

BiTS: Am I mistaken by that? Something that I Guy-Clark- ©Ellis-Creative
read somewhere. I can't remember where I saw
it.

GN: Well, I've been inducted to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

BiTS: Okay, that's what I'm thinking of.

GN: I'm also in the Texas Songwriters Hall of Fame.

BiTS: Where do you get that from? Where does that go to?

GN: That's based in Texas. The Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame is based there and then
the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame is, of course, based here in Nashville.

BiTS: Now it would be remiss of me not to talk to you about one of the greats of all time, as I
often think of him, and that is your wonderful association with Whitey Johnson. It wasn't until I
started researching for this interview that I realised that Whitey Johnson was actually a real
person, based on a real person.

GN: [Chuckles]. Yeah, I initially began performing under the name of Whitey Johnson after writing
a short story about Whitey Johnson, who is like a composite character of my youth that was a
really great guitar player that played in the style of T-Bone Walker and B.B. King, Freddie King.
I've just played two dates in Austin, Texas this last weekend with my Whitey Johnson Band there,
and I did some solo performances in Dallas and Fort Worth as well under Gary Nicholson's name.

BiTS: Do you still perform fairly regularly, as Whitey Johnson?

GN: Yes.

BiTS: Do you enjoy it?

GN: Yeah, yeah, it gives me an opportunity to indulge myself in my blues material that's by all
the blues artists that I've been fortunate to have record my songs through the years and I
concentrate on playing mostly blues as Whitey Johnson, and it's really fun. I have a great fan base
in Nashville and another really great fan base in Austin, but I've also performed in Los Angeles
and San Francisco and Chicago, with my Whitey Johnson Band. I actually even toured Northern