Michael's background in bluegrass banjo and flat picked guitar developed in a seventeen-year stint with tenor and guitarist Rick Fiske, and mandolinist Charlie Moser. They formed the core of several bands, the longest lived and most successful of which was "Whole Wheat". Whole Wheat was on the New Hampshire state touring program for several years in the 1980's, playing festivals, fairs, and colleges around New England. Michael worked out a unique banjo style, combining elements of Scruggs, melodic, and classical styles. He presented some rather avant-garde banjo styling at the Newfane, Vermont banjo contest with a jazzy atonal version of "Devil's Dream" called "Devils Nightmare". In the 1990's Nix arranged Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" for solo 5 string banjo to play as a performance art piece. He entered several banjo festival contests winning prizes, playing the same material.
Nix began applying the banjo to classical music in college. He set Scheidler's sonata in D Major for Violin and Guitar for Mandolin and Banjo, and performed it with Charlie Moser on an April Fool’s recital. He began to play serious new music with banjo parts, for example, George Crumbs’ "Night of the Four Moons".
The use of banjo in several of his large-scale compositions gave Nix an opportunity to explore plectrum and tenor banjo styles. He has performed the music from Weill's "Three Penny Opera". He played "Rhapsody in Blue" with both the Pioneer Valley Symphony and the Western Massachusetts Wind Ensemble.
He transcribed the Bach cello suites for tenor banjo, and has performed several of them in concert. He explored the early 20th century repertoire by transcribing some works from 78 rpm recordings. One work "Ghost Dance", an arrangement by Fred Bacon was taken from a disc that was issued with a Bacon tenor that belonged to Francis LaPierre, a professional tenor banjoist from Western Massachusetts.
In the summer of 2002 Nix developed a concert program surveying banjos styles for Stowe Performing Arts in Vermont, and for the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association concerts in Deerfield, MA. Tony Creamer, of Fretted Instruments Workshop in Amherst, MA, lent Nix a 1935 Bacon Profession Model with an interior resonator, strung with gut strings. Michael wrote a variations set on "Spanish Fandango", the famous pedagogical classical banjo melody for the instrument. Francis LaPierre's son Rick lent Michael a 1910 Cole banjo mandolin from his collection. He played Bach's Cello Suite #1, and the "Ghost Dance" on his own open back tenor banjo.
It was after working on this concert program that Nix concluded that he wanted to develop a banjo that could maintain an integral bass line like the lute or guitar, have a dark, rich, powerful, sustaining tone, and use the high tension strings of the classical guitar. The result was the Banjar.