“I know how lucky I am. I know that I’ve had misfortune, but I also know what is left and what’s in front of me.”
Songs of Deep Emotion and Bright Light is the name of the benefit concert at City Winery NYC next week that is honoring the life and charitable legacy of Nic Pagano. It is organized by father Rich, whose life has been shaped by his late son – more in the last four years than ever before. The outcome of that has been powerful in an unsuspecting way. Rich has gained an indescribable amount of perspective on the world we live in, socially and ethically and everything in between, while navigating his own feelings and respecting his heart and soul. He is an activist, fierce and knowledgeable and outspoken. He has more empathy for his son than ever before, and greater understanding for those whose addiction has an unfortunately strong grip on them. His family is closer than ever, and his marriage remains strong. His eye for creativity and his ear for melody is as vibrant as ever, noticeably potent on his intimate, hefty, yet friendly approach to the songs on Hold Still Light Escapes, his new album (and physical CD!) created with the sugarCane Cups.
“Without [art], I shrivel up and wither away,” Rich Pagano told us candidly during a lengthy conversation about all the aforementioned topics and more. He is forging ahead amidst pain no parent should ever feel through musical expression, and taking strides because of its honest, earnest beauty. The often dark tales of love, loss, and being lost resonate strongly throughout the album, but it is not an album that is angry or sad. Hold Still Light Escapes is hopeful, reflective, produced with heart, teetering on the edge of being somber, and wholly illustrious in its musicality. It is, at its core, a supportive father who found solace in art after the untimely and unfair death of his son who was wrapped up in a disease, an epidemic, and a harsh reality that the folks behind the Third Annual Concert to Benefit the Nic Pagano LGBTQIA+ Scholarship for Recovery aim to bring light to… and hope. Hope and understanding is as key here as the art is, but we will let our interview do the talking – the raw, guiding words of Rich Pagano, father/musician/producer/sober coach, who dives in with clarity, conviction, and warmth.

A concise look at how this album, Hold Still Light Escapes, came to be: “It has been a very difficult four years, as you can understand, but expressing myself through music has helped immensely. After we lost our son, I went right into writing this record. It was a perfect distraction, but it also made me realize that I’m not going to be able to move on correctly unless I put everything else aside and put a body of work out based on my five year journey with his substance use disorder. The record that I had just about finished? I put it on the sideline and went into this instead. I went into Nic’s bedroom, sat on his bed, wrote most of the lyrics there, and then started recording at my studio. Concurrently, I went back to school to become a sober coach, mainly to try to understand even better what my son had gone through. I just decided that because I knew so much about this disease, how could I not help parents that are in the position that I was in? I saw every stage of what this disease can do to a person, so while I was recording, I was taking online classes and becoming a certified sober coach. I know it’s a cliche, but it is cathartic, and it also allowed me to understand and be proud of my son in a different way. The fact that he did so well with this disease for six months prior to his leaving us, and his knowledge and his role… I wanted to understand how he was able to stabilize himself before he had 48 hours of a spiral. All of that was happening while I was recording the record.”
On how every one of the 10 songs on the record can stand on its own, and heal more than hurt: “I didn’t really want to bring people down. There were a couple of melancholy or mid-tempo moments on the record, but I really wanted to entertain people, get to the hook and tell the story without it being something where you have to open up War and Peace every time you’re listening to a song. […] I really wanted this one to be accessible, though. I like pop records. My favorite records are records where the hook is paramount and the singer moves the song along. I tried to make sure that I stayed within those parameters with this and not get too bogged down with production to make it a bit easier to swallow. Of course, having the lyrics accessible, too, so that I could make it clear that it is really important that you listen to the lyrics or read the lyrics of this record. You may like the hook, but it’s important that you understand the story.”
On the joyous aspect of the album, during its creation and beyond, which we here at The Aquarian were taken aback by in the best way: “What can I say? I’m glad that you see the light that’s within the record. I love pop music. I love curating an album. I love finding the right musicians. I had all of my pals come and play on this. A lot of the musicians recording happened to be in my studio, which is actually up in the Hudson Valley. I was doing sessions as a drummer, or I was producing, and of course the bread and butter comes from that. If someone was there that I felt would be perfect for a track, I’d say, ‘Can you hang on a little longer? Can I pay you this much?’ And it was always, ‘No, don’t pay me anything. If it’s for that record, let’s just get into it. I want to be a part of it.’ The whole communal energy for this record was really wonderful with friends coming up and saying, ‘I just wanna play on it.’ We got a wonderful batch of personalities that interpreted a lot of my ideas on this, and what was interesting was that I sometimes tell the musician, whether it be a bass session or a keyboard session, ‘Ok, here’s the muse for this song. Here’s kind of what it’s about,’ and I would be very loose and not go into detail – a lot of them knew what had happened in my life. I put a rough vocal down with the lyrics early on, of course, but the lyrics were, for the most part, in place before the musicians were in recording their parts. I knew that the lyrics were gonna be successful when after the second take, the musician would look at me and say, ‘Wow, you went through that?’ And I thought, ‘Ok, it resonates. That’s good. They’re not just so deep into the rhythm and the groove. They’re actually being taken by the lyrics.’ That is when I knew that that song was gonna be a keeper. I even think the musicians played a little differently hearing the words. Maybe they dug in a little deeper, or created more space when certain words and lyrics came up. Some had them playing less and playing around the words. When I noticed that as I went back and edited the songs take to take, we talked about that moment of the lyrics resonating with them afterward, and how their parts were played differently because of it; that tended to be the final take. It’s an incredible process and I look back fondly on the recording of the record, which took me roughly about two years. I’ll share this, too: after I mixed it and went to mastering, I was carrying my bag home, and I don’t physically carry the tracks, but I had left them with the mastering engineer, and I was walking to the train station – I mastered this in Brooklyn – when I felt this thousand pound weight on my back. The project was done and my mind was thinking, ‘Oh, now I have to get back to the grief process. I don’t have this beautiful distraction here in my life any longer, which I kind of started right after his death. Now what do I do?’ And I fell so deeply, but as part of the process, you’re supposed to fall, and then you find the tools three years into it that have picked you up in the past, and you use them to then move ahead. I was surprised at how the ending of recording, the completion of this record, affected me. I thought I would be more joyful about it, but you really never know how your mind is going to sort of rationalize what you’ve been through. It’s ok now, though, I was able to climb out again.”
[EDITOR’S NOTE: We are honored to exclusively premiere the music video for “Useless,” out now at the link below, with all art and designs by Rich Pagano himself!]
On “Slowly,” out now, getting a lot of feedback: “Nic died in July 2021. In October, we had a really nice day here in the city. We live in Chelsea. The sky was blue and people seemed happy. Maybe there was a cloudy batch of days prior to that, so ‘Slowly’ was my wife and I looking at each other and saying, ‘Oh, we’re feeling pretty good today. Maybe we’re getting past this,’ but we’re only three months in, so we were still in the ICU, so to speak. The next day, of course, we fell again. We went deep into our darkness. ‘Slowly’ is about that. It’s like, ‘today we’re feeling great, and tomorrow we’re hardly there, but hopefully we will be moving on together.’ It’s got his sort of danceable groove to it, too, and I like to observe when people suddenly go to the lyrics and say, ‘Wow, I didn’t think it would be about that.’”
On “Mother Teresa,” out now: “This is where I confronted the woman who brought my son to the street to meet the dealer. I went into his phone and I found all of his information, the whole pathology on the last day of his life. I was able to call her and say, ‘Please don’t hang up on me. I want to talk to you about what happened.’ She was forthcoming. She was still toxic, but she was forthcoming. I decided to write a song, to err on the side of salvation the next time. Unfortunately, she joined Nic four months later due under the same circumstances. So, ‘Mother Teresa’ is about my confrontation with her, and her meeting him and him giving her a kiss when she lands.”
On “Huntington Beach,” another song being enjoyed and discussed by listeners: “When Nick had his first overdose with heroin, we got him out to Huntington Beach at a treatment center there. He relapsed immediately. He lived on the beach for a week. I was following his texts at the time, because you could do that with Verizon, as you may know. I saw that he was talking with someone that was out who had relapsed with him. That person, that kid, was living under a stairwell with him. There was a concert on the beach that weekend, and so they were able to sort of act like they were there to see the bands that were playing, and they mooched food, but then they found out after a while. Huntington Beach has this website where you can see what’s happening, like a Huntington Beach cam where you could watch the main part of the beach where the boardwalk is, since it is a famous boardwalk out there. For a week, until he decided to go back to treatment, my wife and I would watch the Huntington Beach cam on my laptop for hours every day just to see if we could see him walk past while he was homeless on the beach. It was ridiculous because I didn’t even know if he was near the boardwalk or the bridge, but what I did was I zoomed in on that cam and just recorded it. The ‘Huntington Beach’ video is sort of like a time lapse of the day watching the cam.”
On “Say Goodbye At the End of the Day,” the music video: “This song is about another heroin overdose that Nic made it through. ‘I only want you to say goodbye or goodnight at the end of the day. I don’t want you to say goodbye any other time during the day,’ is the lyric. I found this footage of him at Chelsea Piers, and it’s just a slow motion version of him running to the camera while I posted the lyrics on top of it. The song’s theme is, ‘I’m angry with you. I thought I taught you better,’ because I wrote this song when he was still alive, actually. I wasn’t as educated in the disease itself then, so the song was about my anger. ‘I’m glad that you’re still here, but please don’t say goodbye like that again.’ The video is just like I said: him as a young boy running towards the camera.”
On collaborating with treatment centers and non-profits close to his heart: “[Caron Treatment Center] had come to us, ‘us’ being the Beatles cover band known as The Fab Faux, and asked if we would do a benefit event. The person who reached out did not know that my son had been a patient/client two years prior. When they called, I told them I have a deep connection with them […]. Everything fell into place for The Fab Faux to do it, and ‘it’ was a gala here in New York City. Then Nic died and I told them about it. Now people start coming forth that knew our son, so they decide to make this whole thing an evening to raise funds for a Nic Pagano scholarship, officially the Nic Pagano LGBTQIA+ Scholarship for Recovery, partially with what they initially were having the gala for, which was an overall benefit for their organization’s funds. I was just so grateful that they turned the night into a fundraiser in my son’s name that I turned around the next day and said, ‘This is what I do. I produce shows. I create music. I have an amazing array of musicians that I can call upon. Why don’t we do an annual concert and have it be different from your sort of gala, where everyone’s dressed up and it is a much more formal affair? Let’s do something that’s a little more casual, a little more singer-songwriter and rock-based.’ They love the idea. They had never done anything like that before. The other entity we’re working with is the Release Recovery Foundation, which is a sober house. At that time, it was a sober house entity, meaning a Step Down, which is where a person does 30 days in an inpatient treatment program, and you really shouldn’t go back home after that. You should go to a Step Down situation and become acclimated back into your life. My son was at Release Recovery around the same time that he was at Caron Treatment. They actually sent him to Release Recovery. So, Release Recovery said, “We wanna be a part of this.’ We had Caron Treatment Center and Release Recovery coming to us asking to start this foundation in our son’s name and to be a part of these annual concerts… now we are on our third annual!”
On Songs of Deep Emotion and Bright Light, the event at City Winery next week: “It’s different every year. I call friends, or I call people that know artists, whether it be managers or agents. I always have local, talented people that I either play with here in New York, or that I admire. Of course, as you know, you have to have A-listers to sell tickets regardless of what the cause is, because it has to be entertaining and compelling. It’s great, though, and I think at this point, almost 30 clients have passed through the program. It’s an eclectic mix; all of it is a combination of artists in the gay community, friends and people I’ve worked with, other songwriters that maybe are in recovery and want to sing about it. The musical mix is incredible. The night gets poignant, then it becomes a party. Kate Pierson has been a mainstay every year. Kate, you would expect to come and sing B-52’s songs. I love going into her solo records and finding deep cuts, though, and, first of all, she’s sober. Kate is gay and sober, and she has these songs on her solo records that I would say kind of portray that other side of her life outside of this incredible band that she created, which is so uplifting. She is a perfect example of Deep Emotion and Bright Light. Everyone does bring that to the benefit, though, especially on stage. Initially I would have the artist do two songs. I would have the artist pick one song that is uplifting, one that is maybe them seeing the light after darkness, and maybe another song that has a level of darkness. That’s no longer the case. Artists can show up and do two ‘up’ songs, or two ‘down’ songs. In the case of Kate Pierson, like I mentioned, and other artists, too, I can also reference them bringing in something that is of their life struggle, but then the next song would be ‘Love Shack.’ It’s a great night of people just really honing in on the words, and then finding a release in the second song being a celebration. I don’t think there’s anything like it. I’m involved with a lot of multi-artist events here in the city. I’ve MD’d the Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s Foundation Gala. I’m involved with the John Lennon tribute every year as musical director. They’re all great, but in this situation, it really is a juxtaposition of styles that make the night interesting from artist to artist.”
FOR TICKETS TO ON THE NIC PAGANO LGBTQIA+ SCHOLARSHIP FOR RECOVERY EVENT AT CITY WINERY NYC ON JANUARY 23, CLICK HERE!
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CARON & THE RELEASE RECOVERY FOUNDATION, AS WELL AS THEIR PARTNERSHIP FOR THIS BENEFIT & SCHOLARSHIP, CLICK HERE!