A few months ago, Darius Mullin reached out to tell me about a crazy story. Nordista Freeze, a DIY artist from Nashville, was going to try to break the world record for the fewest days to play a concert in all 50 states. Adam Brodsky originally set the mark at 50 days in 2003. 20 years later, Devon Allman and Donavon Frankenreiter shaved one day off the record. Though the record had gotten down to 36 days since then, Nordista Freeze wanted to do it in 30.
And he did! During May of this year, he kicked off his wild tour. The aforementioned Darius Mullin tagged along for the first three shows in Birmingham, Alabama; Cleveland, Mississippi; and Searcy, Arkansas on May 3. After Nordista Freeze set the record, they caught up again for a conversation. If you enjoy the conversation, check out Mullin’s newsletter and Nordista Freeze’s music.
I’m excited to catch up about how things went, since I only got to be there for the first day. For the sake of the interview, what did you do, and why did you do it?
I successfully toured all 50 states in the fastest possible run, which was 36 days. It was 36 days and now it is 30 days (or technically 29-and-a-half).
I mean, on the one hand, I did it to challenge myself to be a world record holder. But really, for me, it seemed like a cool way [to use] myself as the catalyst to weave together and create a modern network of DIY and independent artists and creatives across the country. And there’s a large swath of the country that I still obviously didn’t hit, but at least being able to touch all 50 states within a month shows some sort of unity that can be found through artistic communities.
In 2026, which is a unique time of isolation and division, it was a nice thing to attempt. And also, it just felt right in my life. I’ve been touring across the country for about a decade, and this seemed like a nice way to kind of cap off or tie together a decade of work that I’ve put into touring and believing in different artistic communities and how they could all work together to support me in my art. But at the same time, I give back to these spaces by creating events that hopefully bring their own communities together.
Sounds like the culmination of what you’ve been doing for the past many years of your career in a lot of ways.
Exactly. That first day that we were together had a magic to it. I felt like those first couple of days were crazy. Of course, after that there were other chapters that were longer and more grueling, but that first day was really fun.
I like the unity message. You were breaking a world record, but it wasn’t just breaking it for the sake of breaking it. Breaking it would be good enough, but there’s more to it for you than that, right?
Right, right, totally. You know, I’d say the anecdote that I genuinely wasn’t expecting [was] when people would come to the shows and they would bring me a gift or something that they’d made.
Sometimes I feel not necessarily a guilt, but almost like—people are so passionate and believing in me and wanting this to succeed. I do feel maybe a bit of imposter syndrome. Because, man, there’s real stuff going on out there! There’s people who need help, and there’s real hardships. And I was beginning to feel a little embarrassed of my mission or what I’m doing.
I had some people give me pretty good advice when I was out there: “You doing this stunt enables other people to do whatever their thing is.” And, if someone bakes you banana bread and they bring it to the show, having a response of, “Oh, I don’t deserve this,” doesn’t really add up. What you should actually look at is this person is doing something that they’re passionate about; they’re doing something they love to do, and they’re showing that with you. So, by me putting on this stunt, other people were able to engage with it in their own ways, which actually is really cool and uplifts more people.
You said that it got really grueling after the first few days. Is that largely because there was just so much driving and you were doing only one show a day? Or because that was part of the country that you hadn’t visited as often?
There was the first two days, and then we did one show a day for a while, all the way to the west coast, and then back to Las Vegas. And then it got to where there’d be one or two shows a day going up the west coast. But then once I hit the Midwest, which I guess technically starts in the Dakotas, I started doing two shows almost every single day. I described that route as “the Midwestern pretzel,” because I was basically zigzagging around. That was the hardest part.
When you start the road trip or the big tour, you’ve got the capacity to do eight-hour drives. Things only started to get hard until we got to the Midwest where the landscapes are not as scenic, it rained a lot, and I was doing two shows a day. There’d be times when you’d wake up at 7 A.M., drive until noon, play, leave at 1 P.M., then drive until like 7pm and play again. And that’s just an exhausting way to spend consecutive days.
I knew by the time we hit the East Coast, we’d have a lot of positive momentum. But that time in the middle, there was so much rain. I think that was probably the lowest point. I knew it was never a question whether I was gonna quit, but I was definitely hitting a darker space in my head than I anticipated.
And driving in the rain is a lot more mentally taxing than driving not in the rain.
It’s one thing to drive for 30 minutes in the rain, but when you’re doing hours and hours of days, it’s very hard. There were probably two days where I legitimately just felt like I wasn’t even enjoying it anymore.
I would guess that the shows themselves were probably the best part of that?
Yeah! One person described it as the mile markers of a marathon and how you have people cheering for you. The shows are the easy part. Some people wrongly assume that the shows would be a difficult part. Ultimately, I think the sleep deprivation and the long drives were the hardest part for me.
Tell me about the people who were along for the drives for you. There was Danny and Zayne at the beginning, and there were some others too, right?
So, Zayne was the only other constant. Zayne’s with me the whole time documenting. And then I had attempted to create what I described as a “baton relay” to keep us going. It didn’t exactly work out.
We had Danny for a while. After Danny, we had two people kind of drop out. So, we were alone for five days. But a bunch of other people joined along the way: Zayne’s boyfriend Trevor, my sister, my tour manager, my bass player, and a few other people. If I didn’t have drivers, I would have been pulling over and pouring ice down my back and slapping my face.
Would you ever do this again?
I don’t know. I’m kind of conflicted. I think I can do it faster, but do I want to? I feel like if someone broke the record then I would go again.
You’ll do it to defend the title?
If I had to defend the title, I will do it. If it’s uncontested, then maybe I’ll consider doing it. But I’ve got routes and I actually think you could do it faster. So, we’ll see what happens.
I watched an interview where you said, “[T]he question isn’t doing it so fast, but doing it so slow.” Did this end up being so intense that that idea didn’t apply?
I think what I was originally referring to was traditional touring. I love touring, but I don’t necessarily find it easy. As I get older, you become a little bit more aware of time and how important it is. When you’re 19 and you miss Father’s Day or someone’s birthday, you just kind of think, “Well, that’s the life I chose.” But then as you get older, you’re like, “Man, some of this stuff is important!”
Even when I first started touring, I wouldn’t do any off days. I would book a three-week tour and there’d just be 21 shows. As I get older, I can kind of understand that if I am near the Grand Canyon, maybe I should go see it or maybe it is good to get dinner with your friends while you’re in Milwaukee.
All that being said, I find touring to be too slow. Not only do you drive all day, but then you get to a venue, you load in at like 5 P.M. Then you soundcheck at 6. Then doors are 7 or 8. Music starts at 9. It’s over by like 11:30. Then you leave at 1 A.M. It’s a lot of waiting around!
I felt like I broke free from a lot of that malaise on this tour. I wasn’t loading in. I wasn’t sound-checking. I could be in and out of a venue in an hour-and-a-half. Because of that, this was my favorite tour I’ve ever done.
Have you done much playing just solo acoustic before? I’ve never seen you play a solo acoustic set.
Not really. I always just kind of felt like people came to see me rock and roll. But during this tour, people were very encouraging of my solo sets. Playing solo allows me to fit into more metaphorical spaces.
I loved hearing lots of your acoustic versions. Some of the songs, like “Dolphin,” you completely reimagined.
Dude, thank you.
You were telling me when we were in Cleveland, Mississippi, that you had never actually played all 50 states before.
That’s right. There were seven that I’d never played before.
Which seven did you hit that you had never hit before? And what was your impression of any of them?
The first one that I hit was Wyoming. I’d been to Wyoming; I’d never played there. We had a great experience. We went on I-90, which basically means I just barely nicked Wyoming at all.
Then I had never played Alaska, which was a three hour stint back and forth. I just dedicated an entire round trip from Seattle, where I just played, went up to Alaska, performed, and came back.
There were two in New England: Rhode Island and Maine, which both went great. And that leaves three. What were they? Delaware is one of them. I never played Delaware, and I think I was in Delaware for less than an hour. We literally showed up, played this coffee shop where nobody cared that we were playing, and then left. It’s such a small state that we were like, wow, I think we literally were here for 54 minutes or something.
Oh, North Dakota! Now, that’s actually an interesting one, because that wound up being one of the highlights of the entire tour. We played Fargo, North Dakota, and there was like 80 kids there out of nowhere. It was a really great show.
And then, of course Hawaii, where I ended things. That was amazing. It was just cool to be there. I played a show to probably about 10 people. It was extremely cool. And then my girlfriend and I just got to hang out for three days and go to the beach. It was awesome.
You said the previous record was like 35 days. Who was the first band to hit all 50 and then how the record has gotten whittled down?
I think they were called The Black Donnellys. They’re an Irish band. They came over here and just crushed it. They did the whole US, and they were doing radio and other things too.
That’s crazy.
I don’t know much about them, but I know there’s a documentary about it. I’d like to watch it.
I’d imagine Ireland is smaller than most US states, so doing all that traveling in that short amount of time would have been, I mean, tough for a European.
I think when I did my UK tour, and I was opening for this guy, Casey Lowery, and I was riding with him, and he kept just being like, “Oh, mate, we got another long drive today!” And I’d be like, “Bro, these drives are like two hours. This is like Nashville to Jackson, Tennessee. It’s a day trip.”
So, tell me some of the stranger or more wholesome or more horrible anecdotes that you would wanna share. I am curious about how you played an extra show at a Steak ‘n Shake.
I did play! I played one song. I guess I didn’t count it as a show in my head, but you could make an argument. The father of Zayne, my friend and videographer, came to our show in Kentucky and was like, “Oh, I wanna buy you guys lunch.” There was a Steak 'n Shake next door, so we went there.
We get over there and right as we’re walking in the door, I see these kind of hipster-looking girls walking into a coffee shop we just played at. I walked over and I’m like, “Are you guys here for a show by chance?” And they were like, “Yeah, we missed it!” And I was like, “I’m free!” I was gonna play outside, but it was so hot so we went into Steak 'n Shake and did a little song.
I also believe you got pulled over a few times.
Danny got a speeding ticket, and I got a speeding ticket. Actually, I’m glad you mentioned that because I need to pay that speeding ticket before it gets elevated.
Did you have any bad experiences?
I think the worst would just be neutral. There’s just a few times when I could tell that maybe the owner of a space I’d been interacting with on Instagram DMs or email maybe hadn’t communicated properly to their staff what was going on.
One last thing: Where can people connect with you? And then what’s up next?
People can find me pretty much anywhere. I’m most active on Instagram. I’m pretty active on TikTok these days, too. Next up, I’m going to apply to be on Survivor.
After that, I’m going to play my 1,000th show. I’ve played 969. The 1000th show is going to be in Nashville somewhere. It’s gonna be an “end-of-an-era” kind of vibe. It’s gonna be really emotional and cool, and gonna have a big band.
Want more from Nordista Freeze? Check out a full set from his world record tour on YouTube.
Want more from Darius Mullin? Check out his newsletter, Midnight Donuts.
Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves.
George Thorogood and the Destroyers played all 50 states and DC in 50 days back in 1981.