Photo Courtesy of Nordista Freeze
Nordista Freeze
Nashville-based singer-songwriter Nordista Freeze set out on tour earlier this month for an attempt to set a world record by playing 50 shows in all 50 states in just 30 days. “This tour is my DIY magnum opus trying to stitch together all the stuff I’ve learned and places I’ve seen as succinctly and quickly as possible,” he says. Freeze plays his 22nd show of tour in Wisconsin this Sunday, May 17 at The Sugar Maple (441 E. Lincoln Ave.) in Bay View. The free show is at 2 p.m. and marks Freeze’s third time playing in Milwaukee.
Described as a “road warrior” on Bandcamp, Freeze has long been a prolific touring performer since beginning his music career in 2010. “I just love seeing places and playing music in a scrappy, DIY kind of way,” he affirms. With a bright psychedelic pop sound, he has released six studio albums as well as a myriad of EPs, with the most recent album On the Banks of Disappearing released in February 2025.
Freeze explains he has had the idea to play all 50 states on one tour for about eight years, admiring artists who have accomplished the feat themselves like George Thorogood, Adam Brodsky, Devon Allman and Frank Turner. He reckons, “I wanted to be more challenged. When I thought of doing 50-50-50, I felt like I would get so lonely with all the downtime, so I wanted to lean into something that was even more DIY with just me and an acoustic guitar and a PA playing literally anywhere as fast as possible. The fun of it is not knowing if you’re going to fail, doing something that actually might be too hard and seeing if I’m going to crash and burn in real time.”
Mapping America
The tour took Freeze about six months to map out. Shows were booked with the help of friends and fans in each state. Starting in Alabama on May 3, Freeze embarked west and played through all the Pacific and Rocky Mountain states, incorporating a quick flight from Washington to Alaska. Freeze then moved east and is now playing through the Midwest. Then he heads to New England and the East Coast before playing the penultimate show in his hometown of Nashville. From there, the tour concludes with his flight to Hawaii.
“Sleep has gone back and forth,” Freeze adds. “We were pretty poorly off after the first two days but we’ve been fighting for it. Last night we got eight hours of sleep so that’s great. We’re trying to get eight hours every night and I’m trying to do too many days in a row of not good sleep. I can’t burn out because it’s a marathon instead of a sprint, as they say.”
Being on such a tight schedule, Freeze is keeping most sets on this tour to 30 to 45 minutes. Condensing 50 shows into 30 days means he plays three shows a day in some cases. “There’s six times where I do three shows a day,” Freeze notes. “Day one was Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, and day two was Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. Two of those days are in New England, which makes a little more sense because the states are so tiny.”
Joining him on tour is photographer Zayne Isom, who is filming a documentary about the world record attempt. A few friends have flown in to help the two with driving shifts as well. “We don’t have a lot of wiggle room in terms of ways to make it comfortable,” Freeze reckons. “We’re not getting hotels or anything.”
So far, Freeze’s show in the college town of Searcy, Arkansas has probably been his biggest on tour so far. “We rolled up to this coffee shop patio and there were probably like a hundred people there,” Freeze recalls. “I like the small towns; I’ve played Trinidad, Colorado a couple times and it was the same thing. People have come back wearing my merch, which is way cooler to me.”
