A San Rafael musician struggled to finish his debut album; now he’s fighting for his life

On New Year’s Eve 2020, aspiring singer-songwriter Nick Whitman made a resolution — to write and record an album of his original songs.

He had always played guitar and sang as a sideline, but he’d never taken music that seriously, instead enjoying it as a diversion from his real job in technology, including a stint as a successful app entrepreneur. At one time a decade ago, the apps he created were raking in $50,000 a month, enabling him to buy a house in San Rafael’s Santa Venetia neighborhood.

When he decided to make a debut album, he was already entering his 40s and had never performed professionally or played in a band, so he had his doubts about the efficacy of such an ambition. But he felt he had something to say in his music and forged ahead, writing and recording a four-song EP in his home studio.

“I was well on my way, writing a song a month,” he says. “Then, the pandemic hit and the whole thing goes south.”

At the same time the world was shutting down, his personal life was in shambles. His marriage had been on the rocks for some time and subsequently ended in divorce. He quit a 9-to-5 job with a tech startup that he hated, sold the house he’d shared with his former wife and moved into a duplex apartment, working on his music in a studio he rented in an industrial section of San Rafael, tracking his vocals and playing all the instruments himself. He admits he had a lot to learn about songwriting, recording and mixing his tracks, but he had a vision all his own and wanted people to hear his songs and tell him what they thought of them.

So, when he saw other aspiring songwriters and musicians performing on Chillavision, a video streaming service on the social news site Reddit, he launched his own weekly Chillavision show on Saturday nights to showcase the songs he was working on and chat with his viewers.

“For whatever reason, it got super popular really quickly,” he remembers. “For a time, we were pulling a couple hundred thousand viewers every night.”

Drug struggles

A rambling and discursive conversationalist, Whitman says he holds the record for the longest Reddit stream, 20 hours and 20 minutes. After playing his songs on his show, many of them with a kind of alt-country rock sound, he attracted the interest of a European independent record label, which offered him a contract. So far, he’s preferred to put out the 14-song album, “Down in California,” himself. It’s available on Spotify, Amazon, YouTube and other streaming platforms.

For many years, he had been struggling with a drug problem, an addiction to marijuana that he partly blames for the breakup of his marriage. Originally from Buffalo, New York, he felt guilty about his failure to see his father before he died of cancer in his hometown a year ago. That was when he hit bottom.

“I was so checked out,” he says. “When I’m smoking, that’s all there is.”

Mourning his father’s death, he decided that it was time for him to get straight, seeking help in a recovery program that led to what he describes as “a spiritual awakening.”

“I felt so much relief,” he says. “My life completely changed from that moment. The misery and loneliness kind of disappeared. It was a miracle in a lot of ways.”

Year of sobriety

As he celebrates his 43rd birthday in April, he’s also marking a year of being sober. He wrote a song for the album, “Love with a Capital ‘G,’” that he says “encapsulates my journey in sobriety.”

While his spiritual life was blossoming, he had been concerned for some time about his physical health, losing 80 pounds in a year and suffering from gastrointestinal symptoms.

“I was telling my doctor that everything in my life was great,” he says. “I was living my dream, recording music, doing yoga every day. The only thing is I have this weird GI thing.”

In early January, after a series of tests and scans, he was diagnosed with stage four rectal cancer that had spread to his liver and lungs.

“My doctor said, ‘Look, without treatment you get six months, maybe a year,’” he says. “‘With treatment, on average, about two years.’”

A few weeks later, he broke the devastating news to his online community of fans in an emotional segment on his Chillavision show.

“You’ve meant so much to me,” he told them, wiping away tears. “I love you all.”

In response, one of his loyal viewers posted: “I’m censoring my reactions, but I am beyond sorry. I am at a loss.”

Committed to music

Because his cancer has metastasized, the only treatment his doctors told him was available to him was chemotherapy. After some debate with himself, he decided to go ahead with it and is now in his second round of chemo.

While his album was mostly done before he was diagnosed, he wrote a new song, “Except You,” that reconfirms his commitment to his musical creativity despite the cancer that threatens his life.

“The conceit of the song is that I’m going to keep making music unless you stop me,” says Whitman, his voice cracking.

Along with his music, he doesn’t know how he could deal with his prognosis without the spiritual awaking he experienced when he was working on his sobriety.

“The cancer has given me a chance to really test where the rubber hits the road on my spirituality,” he says. “Are you going to turn tail and run because of this bad luck, or whatever you want to call this bad situation, because it would be easy to forsake everything? I went through a little of that. I haven’t been perfect. I’ve had moments of doubt. But, I’m trying to maintain the light. In fact, I’m writing a song about that now.”

Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net