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The profile · researched 16 October 2026
12/OC: the Nichols brothers' route from a Moosehead Lake carpentry blunder to a Portland arena
Reid and Will Nichols spent a decade playing Maine bars before a Nashville move, a hometown arena headline and a national support slot with Dylan Scott; in October 2026 they are back in clubs with a fresh single and a run through Boston, Columbus and Atlanta.
Twelve inches on centre
The name is a joke at their own expense. The Nichols brothers were framing a bunkhouse at the family camp on Moosehead Lake, set the floor joists 24 inches apart, decided the spacing was wrong, and overcorrected to 12 inches on centre — far more timber than the job called for. The abbreviation they used to mock themselves ended up on the tickets.
The brothers grew up in Portland, Maine, and were playing at family gatherings and local rooms while still at primary school. Their first paid booking came at Grateful Grain Brewing Company in Monmouth, Reid aged ten and Will thirteen. Through their years at Portland High School the act was a bluegrass one, built around open mics and jam sessions; the turn towards country came around 2020, which is when the writing started pointing at radio rather than at string-band repertoire.
The working line-up has settled around Reid on lead vocals, acoustic guitar and cajón, and Will on lead guitar, with George Chaison-Lapine on drums and Chris Fawcett on bass. As of December 2025 Reid was 21 and Will 24, which makes the decade of gigging behind them unusual for a band at this stage.
The records that moved them out of the bars
The debut single "Forever Bound", released in 2022, became one of the most-requested songs on Portland country station WPOR — the first evidence that the band had an audience beyond the rooms they could drive to. "Problems" and "Starts with Her" followed, and the band's own billing credits a single with 16 weeks at the top of Maine's main country station.
"Born and Raised" is the clearest statement of the formula: contemporary country production with specific Maine detail stitched into it, Moosehead Lake included. Reid has described the aim as writing mainstream country songs with hints of Maine in them, which is a more honest summary of the catalogue than the regional-pride framing the band sometimes attracts.
Support slots did the rest. On 30 August 2024 they opened at the Maine Savings Amphitheater on a bill headlined by Walker Hayes, with Tenille Arts and Kylie Morgan also playing — the kind of booking that puts a local act in front of a shed-sized crowd for the first time. At the New England Music Awards they were named Act of the Year for 2025, an award covering all genres across the six states rather than a country category.
Nashville, and the hometown arena gamble
The brothers relocated to Nashville roughly eighteen months before December 2025 — about two years ago by the time the Portland Press Herald returned to them in May 2026 — on the straightforward logic that the co-writing and the relationships cannot be done remotely. Reid's description of the benefit was unsentimental: sitting in rooms with those people and getting to know them.
The bet they placed on their own standing came on 20 December 2025, when they headlined the roughly 5,000-capacity Cross Insurance Arena in Portland under the billing "A Hometown Holiday with 12/OC and Friends", with Nashville acts Kelsey Hart and Troubadour Blue opening. It is a venue that normally hosts touring headliners rather than bands from a few miles away, and the band had no label machine behind the booking.
People who have watched them locally tend to talk about the self-sufficiency rather than the songs. Musician Toby McAllister put it as passion and drive and doing everything themselves; WPOR host Jon Shannon made the commercial point instead, that they appeal to a younger demographic and sound like a contemporary country band rather than a regional novelty.
The Dylan Scott run
Within days of the Portland show the band had a national tour to announce, held under embargo until the headliner's own schedule went public: they spent the first part of 2026 opening for Dylan Scott on the "'Til I Can't… I Will Tour". The Maine stop landed at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor on Saturday 14 March 2026 at 7 p.m., with 12/OC opening in a building two and a half hours up the road from the arena they had headlined three months earlier.
Reid called playing the same stage as Scott in a different state every night surreal, having grown up on his records. Will's account of the routine was flatter — every night is different, the pre-show nerves do not go away, and the job is to go out and do it. The tour was still being run in-house: Reid programmed the light show himself and Will handled the back-end logistics, both of them learning the work as they went.
Summer 2026 saw them promoted to headline billings at home. On 18 July they topped the bill at Bowl in the Pines in Sidney, a 6.30 p.m. start with Kelsey Hart opening, tickets from $52.73 to $84.61, with the show benefiting the Travis Mills Foundation. On 1 August they headlined the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom in New Hampshire, with Gavin Marengi opening.
Where they stand in October 2026
The release strategy is a single every few months rather than an album. "Better with a Beer" arrived in 2024; 2025 brought "Starts with Her", "Sound of You Leaving", "Cold Beer Boys", "Born and Raised" and "Peace of My Hometown"; 2026 has produced "Five Stars", "Hurtin' on Whiskey" on 27 March, "Radio Dial", "All We Know" on 3 July, and the current single "Better in the Dark", out on 25 September 2026. There is still no full-length record in the catalogue.
Awards season brings a second test of the regional standing. The 2026 New England Music Awards ballot has 12/OC up for Country Act of the Year, with "Radio Dial" nominated for Song of the Year; the ceremony is set for Sunday 15 November at Six String Grill and Stage, which falls in the middle of their current touring block.
That block is deliberately small-room. After the arenas and the beach ballroom, the autumn schedule runs Off the Rails in downtown Boston on Saturday 17 October, The Bluestone in Columbus, Ohio on 22 October, and Vinyl at Center Stage in Atlanta on 6 November — three cities, three clubs, and the first sustained attempt to build a paying audience outside New England rather than open for someone else's.
The show, now
The current run is a club run. The next date on sale is Saturday 17 October 2026 at Off the Rails, a country and line-dancing venue in downtown Boston, a 7 p.m. show with C-Dot 416 on the bill and general admission standing tickets at $20 — a long way down in scale from the Bangor arena in March, and priced to fill a room rather than to cash in on it. The band plays as a four-piece, Reid fronting on acoustic guitar and cajón with Will on lead guitar, Chaison-Lapine on drums and Fawcett on bass, and the production is still built in-house: Reid programmed the light show for the Dylan Scott tour himself. Sets lean on the singles released since 2022, with "Born and Raised" and "Peace of My Hometown" carrying the Maine-specific material that built the following in the first place. Will's own description of the routine is that every night is different and the nerves arrive on schedule. On home turf the billing is larger and the support is a single Nashville act — Kelsey Hart at Bowl in the Pines in Sidney on 18 July 2026, Gavin Marengi at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom on 1 August — while the autumn dates in Columbus on 22 October and Atlanta on 6 November are the band testing whether the audience exists outside New England. No published set length is listed for the current shows.
Researched from pressherald.com · wabi.tv · pressherald.com · music.apple.com · songkick.com · ticketweb.com · barefootcountrymusicfest.com · q1065.fm
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