About

About Particle Kid

 

Composer/multi-media artist Micah Nelson has a remarkable output that spans the creative spectrum unlike few others. The visionary, who Rolling Stone magazine hailed as one of their “New Classics” (“The creative visionaries celebrated here come from the worlds of music, acting, comedy, sports and more. …they share a refusal to be contained by the rules of the past as they define the territory of the future”), produces art under the moniker Particle Kid and finds no boundaries in his creativity.

 

Particle Kid has released six albums of his original music, including his most recent release Time Capsule, a 26-song musical journey through time, space, and consciousness. It features guest appearances from Jim James, Sean Ono Lennon, J Mascis, Margo Price, The Lovely Eggs, and Micah’s dad Willie Nelson on three tracks including “Die When I’m High (Halfway to Heaven).” His previous albums – self-titled debut Particle Kid, Everything Is Bullshit, Particle War, Window Rock, Live! Underground – are just part of the catalog of work Nelson has amassed with other artists and musicians. He was chosen by Neil Young to become a member of his band Crazy Horse in 2023, and Nelson was also been featured in Young’s full-length film Paradox. For Record Store Day in 2018, he released Lucky Wheel, a split 12” vinyl collaboration with punk legend and X co-founder John Doe. He produced and played on Willie’s recent highly-celebrated studio album Last Leaf on the Tree for which he also created the cover art as well as a fully-animated music video for the title track. (Willie coined Micah “Particle Kid,” when he misspoke a “prodigal son” greeting.) On tour year round, Particle Kid has headlined shows around the world as well as opened for many other artists including The Flaming Lips, Tinariwen, Meat Puppets, Claypool Lennon Delirium, and been part of the line up for Luck Reunion, BottleRock Festival, UTOPiAfest, and the Outlaw Music Festival.

 

As an industrial hemp activist, Particle Kid has served on the National Hemp Association’s Board of Directors, participates in Farm Aid events and their annual music festival, and combined the missions of both organizations when he spearheaded a Change.org petition championing the Industrial Hemp Farming Act which became law in December 2018. Combining his passion for music and hemp, for his album Time Capsule the artist hand-made 20 actual time capsules constructed from hempcrete. Purchasers of the Time Capsule CD set have a chance of winning a ‘Time Token.’ Each of these randomly hidden tokens can be redeemed for one of the 20 hempcrete time capsules that contain a thumb drive that includes the record and videos, printed album artwork, industrial hemp seeds that Nelson cultivated himself, and a physical ticket that gains general admission to every Particle Kid concert in the year 2042. Nelson states, “I hope that incorporating industrial hemp into my art will help educate people not only on the crop’s many sustainable functional uses, but how it was deeply entwined with our nation’s history and the history of the world.”

  For nearly a decade, through his production company (which also includes his wife Alex Dascalu Nelson aka Sisterlu), Spitball Pictures, he has created music videos and films for his own music projects as well as for other artists. His productions include music videos for Edie Brickell & New Bohemians (“Tripwire” and “My Power”), Promise of the Real’s Anthony LoGerfo (“Love Commando”), folk-punk musician Sunny War (“Age of a Man“), GRAMMY award-winning Tinariwen (“Wartilla, Dan Caret Dub”), ukulele and guitar duo Folk Uke (“Small One”), and Neil Young (“Shape of You”). Watch a collection of his work on this playlist. He directed and produced an animated short film adaptation of Young’s 1982 dystopian sci-fi concept album, TRANS, that was released in 2024 as part of Young’s Archives Vol. III (1976-1987) box set. Particle Kid has also built his graphic art portfolio, creating album artwork for his own projects as well as the posters for his solo tours. He is part of the Moonlight Arts Collective, an art community founded by Incubus’ Brandon Boyd, who is also a painter and art enthusiast. In 2023, 14 selections of Micah’s original art debuted as part of the collective. Since the initial showing, new originals and limited prints are regularly added to the collection for purchase via his online gallery at Moonlightartscollective.com