Will and Reid Nichols started playing together at family gatherings, around campfires or at holiday parties.

By the time the brothers were 10 and 13 they played their first bar gig, at Grateful Grain Brewing Company in Monmouth. They kept playing through their days at Portland High School and beyond, first in a bluegrass band and then in a country band called 12/OC.

“We’d make enough money to maybe get candy at Rite Aid at the end of the school day,” said Reid, now 21. Will, 24, remembers feeling “rich” after one gig when they made $30 a piece.

The brothers will play one of the biggest show of their careers in front of hometown fans Dec. 20 at Cross Insurance Arena in Portland. “A Hometown Holiday with 12/OC and Friends” will also feature Nashville-based country acts Kelsey Hart and Troubadour Blue. The band has been based in Nashville for about a year and a half, networking with other country artists and songwriters. But the brothers come back to Maine often, playing before thousands of fans at venues like Thompson’s Point and the State Theatre, both in Portland. Their Cross arena show will have a capacity of about 5,000.

A couple days after the Portland show, the band is planning to disclose its biggest tour so far, playing alongside an “A-list” country star. They’re not allowed to announce the star’s name or tour details any sooner, Reid said.

Before they could fill Maine’s larger venues, 12/OC worked clubs and bars, like the Brunswick in Old Orchard Beach, where they played regular summer shows for a while. They’ve also been appearing on the morning show for Portland country station WPOR on Wednesdays for the past couple of years, talking to folks and singing their songs. Besides performing, they basically manage themselves, including arranging interviews or TV appearances.

“Everyone wants to be in a band and put out songs and do shows. But the doing it is the hard part,” said Maine musician Toby McAllister, who has performed with 12/OC several times, along with his band, The Sierra Sounds. “They have the passion and the drive and they’re just out their doing it, doing everything themselves.”

Jon Shannon, a morning host and program director at WPOR, says 12/OC is unique among Maine country bands because of their youth and their sound. While Maine has several alt-country, roots or Americana acts, there really aren’t many bands doing original pop country music, said Shannon. Shannon said WPOR started playing 12/OC soon after they started putting out songs. Their debut single “Forever Bound” came out in 2022 and was one of the station’s most requested songs, Shannon said.

“They appeal to a younger demographic and they are so accessible, ” said Shannon. “They sound like a contemporary country band, and that makes them a viable band for us to play.”

The band’s song “Born and Raised” is a good example of that. The song is a catchy, guitar and drum-heavy anthem to the working class, with Reid singing with a pronounced twang. But the Nichols want you to know it’s about growing up in Maine, so they’ve peppered it with specific references to Moosehead Lake, where the family has a camp. The video for the song has lots of shots of Moosehead, the family camp, and of the band’s performance at Thompson’s Point last August. Another video, for the song “Starts with Her,” features footage shot at Portland’s State Theatre.

“We’re writing our own mainstream country songs, but with hints of Maine,” said Reid. “That song (‘Born and Raised’) is all about growing up here and what it meant to us.”

BORN AND RAISED

Will and Reid Nichols grew up splitting their time between Portland and the small town of Alna, northeast of Wiscasset. They both graduated from Portland High School. They come from a musical family and remember always hearing live music at family gatherings or around campfires by the lake. Their dad played guitar, as did one uncle, while another uncle plays harmonica. The two started playing instruments while still in grammar school.

Will is the band’s lead guitarist, while Reid plays acoustic guitar, sings lead and plays the cajon, a box-shaped percussion instrument. They started playing bluegrass, but listened to a lot of country and roots artists like Steve Earle and Old Crow Medicine Show and shifted their focus to country. Another brother, Jack, played with Reid and Will for a while, but is not a member of 12/OC.

They played gigs throughout high school and both worked at times in carpentry, including for an uncle. The band’s name comes from a carpentry misadventure while framing a bunk house at their family’s camp near Moosehead Lake. They were trying to follow standard construction practice of leaving 16 inches from the center of one floor joist, or support beam, to the next. The measurement is referred to as 16 inches on center, or 16 OC. But they left 24 inches, which made the floor bouncy. So they tried to fix what they had done by adding more support, but ended up with joists 12 inches apart, or 12 OC.

“We just weren’t thinking. We started with 24, which is severely underbuilt, then we went to 12, which is severely overbuilt,” said Will. “And we wasted a bunch of money. So we were talking and just joking that we should be called 12/OC Carpentry. And it somehow turned into our band name, and stuck.”

The band today includes George Chaison-Lapine on drums, Chris Fawcett on bass, and Sammy Thayer as the engineer. About a year and a half ago the band moved to Nashville, Tennessee, long-known as the capital of the country music business, because they wanted to be able to collaborate with other musicians and songwriters, and make connections in the music industry – like hooking up with an A-list country star to tour with.

“”The local scene is amazing in Maine, but there’s sort of a ceiling. There’s only so much songwriting here you can do, on Zoom calls with people. In Nashville you get to sit in rooms with these people and get to know them,” said Reid. “We want to do what we’ve been doing in Maine, but all over the country.”

Reid says the band members feel like they have the “best of both worlds” right now because they’re in the heart of the country music business, but always have Maine to come home to, where they can play before crowds. Last year they played a sold-out holiday show the State Theatre, which holds about 1,900 people. Their holiday show at Cross Insurance Arena will be configured for about 5,000 people.

“Playing big venues is way more work but it’s also way more fun,” Reid said. “We’re not going to turn down the biggest venue in our hometown.”