Born the son of a Texas oil rigger and a Greek belly dancer who met in Libya, Africa, Nikos Brisco was born and raised in Dallas, where he is famous for his alt-country band FEVER IN THE FUNKHOUSE signed to Polygram Records in 1992 and voted “Best New Act 90” and “Best Act Overall 91” by The Dallas Observer, one of the defining pioneers of the Deep Ellum music scene. In 1993, Brisco recorded his first solo work PLUTO with the internationally renowned “gypsy classical”/jazz band Café Noir.
As well as Gypsy guitar Brisco also plays Greek trichordo & tetrachordo bouzoukia, tzouras & baglama, laouto and Turkish oud.
Nikos recently studied Rroma (Gypsy) music, history and language at the Amala School (Valjevo, Serbia) through TCG/ITI travel grants and Arts International, and began an extended collaboration with Dah Teatar in Belgrade, Serbia with playwright Ruth Margraff. Brisco and Margraff’s newest folk opera “Café Antarsia” premiered in New York City to sold out houses at HERE Arts Center’s Culturmart Winter Festival 2005.

“Nikos Brisco writes and sings songs about people getting in trouble and making bad things worse because they don't know any other way; in other words, he sings songs about real people. In albums like Greek/Texan his music is as tough and gnarly as it is tender and mournful, mixing the intimate and the epic with strains of folk, blues and a bit of rock wafting through like hot and cold breezes. There is nothing slick, nothing manufactured, nothing calculated about Brisco. In his live performances, he sings like he means it because he obviously does. In "Greenbelt," the song that leads off Greek/Texan he sings: "Remember, first we give our soul/And then we give our bones." It's an incantation of sorts -- a promise and a reminder to himself that the only way worth doing anything is to do it all the way.”

John Freedman, The Moscow Times 2003

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