PORT ST. LUCIE PEOPLE
Stix (toasting right below the capital B) enjoys a moment with the Ramones
in the foreground at Max’s Kansas City during the punk era in 1970s New
York City. The photo was published in The New Yorker magazine.
Name: Stix Nickson
Age: 66
Lives in: Port St. Lucie
Occupation: Music teacher and
percussion retailer
Family: Son George, 28, and
daughter Alexis, 20
Background: Studio drummer
and sideman in New York City
before coming to Port St. Lucie to work as a photographer
and Realtor. Owner of Drummersonly Drum Shop the past
eight years.
Something most people don’t know about me: “Most people
don’t know I was a videographer, photographer and that I
once ran for the Port St. Lucie City Council.”
Enjoying dinner in New York City are, from left, Stix, drummer Buddy Rich,
drum teacher Charlie Perry and his wife, and Stix’s mother, Avra.
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coln Park Academy band room as a seventh-grader, he began
playing songs on the xylophone. His teacher said, “Where did
you learn how to do that?” George Nickson would make allstate
percussion every year until he graduated. He was given
a full scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music.
Upon graduation, he applied and was accepted to the Juilliard
School in New York City. George was given a full scholarship
to earn a master’s degree from a school that accepts less than 7
percent of the people who apply.
“My son’s success inspires me,” says Stix, who legally
changed his first name in 1975. “I thank Buddy Rich every
day. My son was born on the day the music died, the same
day Buddy Rich died. He calls us (local drummers) hacks,
but he practiced two to three hours a day in high school. In
college, he practiced six to eight hours a day. That is what
you have to do to stay at the top of your game, whether it is
football, golf or music. Today it is all about instant gratification.
Music is a really difficult thing. You have to have talent
and you have to practice.”
Stix is just as proud of his daughter, Alexis, a political
science major at the University of Ottawa on a full scholarship.
Also a Lincoln Park graduate, Alexis recently worked
as an aide to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper with
top-secret security clearance one day and out of a job the next
when Harper was voted out of office.
For the past eight years, Stix has operated his Drummersonly
Drum Shop on Village Green Drive in Port St. Lucie and
the 20 or so students he instructs keep the doors open. Just
about everything related to percussion takes up every square
inch of the place. The shop looks like Drums R Us with
several practice rooms and a large soundproof room used for
studio recording.
When he got a call that St. Lucie County was going to
throw out soundproofing panels, Stix rushed to the scene.
“There is the dumpster right there, that minivan,” he told the
county staffers.
Because he doesn’t have a college degree, Stix can’t teach
fulltime, but he has been hired as an adjunct instructor, teaching
band students at all of St. Lucie County’s high schools.
He is also an adjudicator judge for the Florida Bandmasters
Association, grading band performances from other parts of
the state.
Since coming to St. Lucie County in 1990, Stix worked as a
Realtor, rising to serve as president of the Real Estate Association
of St. Lucie County. He also worked as a photographer, a
passion he has enjoyed since his days on Long Island. “I took
up photography in high school,” he says. “My teacher helped
get me into Ohio University for photography. I was at Kent
State shooting pictures of the cops beating students when
these two cops clubbed me in the head from behind, knocked
me down and ripped the camera from around my neck. They
opened the camera, exposed the film and took me to jail. This
judge was leaning back in his chair, feet up on his desk with a
cigar hanging out of his mouth as those arrested came before
him. ‘Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.’ Eventually, they dropped the
charges. I had too much music and pot so I dropped out of
school and came back to New York.”
While attending prep school in Massachusetts, Stix was