Jason Isbell's Thirty Best Songs (an Answer to Steven Hyden and Brian Koppelman)

Photo by Jason Earle

Cultural critic Steven Hyden (@steven_hyden on Twitter) recently ranked the thirty best Jason Isbell songs for a piece in Uproxx. Brian Koppelman (@briankoppelman on Twitter) responded with his own list. Naturally, I got to thinking about what songs I would include if anyone asked. 

The number sounded daunting. Just thirty songs? Isbell has almost never missed during his career. Even as a kid in his early twenties he was writing some of the finest songs in American roots history. 

If you want to be the best, you gotta imitate the best. So, I decided to take on the challenge of meeting two heavyweight cultural thinkers at their game. 

The process of deciding my list of the thirty best Isbell songs looked like this. First, I listed the songs that immediately came to mind. That was good for about eighteen tunes in a two-minute span. 

Then, I walked away and let the list marinate. Next came an examination of each album and some rearranging (How did I forget Live Oak at first?). Finally, the list was made. 

It was not until after my group was finalized that I took the time to read Hyden and Koppelman’s lists. Of course, you will get little argument from me no matter what your list looks like. I just did not want to be swayed by either because I have so much respect for their work.

Photo by Jason Earle

What surprised me but shouldn’t have about my list is how heavy it is on the most recent three records. Isbell was my favorite writer of the three geniuses in Drive-by Truckers. I saw him play at a barbecue restaurant in Jacksonville Beach (twice) right after he went out on his own. I preordered the Southeastern vinyl. 

I remember the record arriving at my apartment in Jacksonville and spending the day listening over and over again. Crying and wanting to immediately go out and write. Those early songs had lived with me for years. I consider myself really fortunate to be about Isbell’s age. I’ve grown into adulthood with his songs as the soundtrack- each one hitting me at the right time, exactly when I was ready for it. 

Therein lies the power of a creative honing their craft. Isbell keeps getting better. Each successive release is stronger than the last. Only one of the three as yet released singles from the forthcoming Reunions made my list, but that decision was based purely on the fact that I have not had time to digest the other two. Early indications are this may be his best record yet.

With great respect to Hyden and Koppelman, I offer my list of Jason Isbell’s thirty best songs.

Photo by Jason Earle

1. Cover Me Up

2. Decoration Day

3. If We Were Vampires

4. Elephant

5. Speed Trap Town

6. Danko/Manuel

7. White Man’s World

8. Live Oak

9. Goddamn Lonely Love

10. Traveling Alone

11. Be Afraid

12. Outfit

13. Children of Children

14. Hope the High Road

15. Something More Than Free

16. Codeine

17. Alabama Pines

18. Chaos and Clothes

Other than “Goddamn Lonely Love,” Those first eighteen flew out of my sleepy brain this morning before coffee, morning pages, or a walk. A couple of them moved around, and “Goddamn Lonely Love” steadily worked its way up the list. The more I look at it, the more I think this is exactly right. Consider how good each one of those tunes is and how much they have impacted your thinking.  

19. Stockholm
20. Tupelo
21. Relatively Easy
22. Dress Blues
23. Yvette
24. Tour of Duty
25. Flying Over Water
26. Hudson Commodore
27. If It Takes a Lifetime
28. Flagship
29. Palmetto Rose
30. Last of My Kind

The last few are always the hardest. “Yvette” went in and out, up and down this list. After looking at Koppelman and Hyden’s lists, I wonder whether I should have included “Songs She Sang in the Shower” and “Cumberland Gap,” both of which were on my list at some point. 

Anyone reading this is asking about “Super 8” or “24 Frames” or “Different Days.” The purists may wonder where “Chicago Promenade” fits. You are right, but I’m not wrong. Debate and discussion are encouraged in the comments or over on Twitter. 

Album Review | American Aquarium's Lamentations

It feels like yesterday American Aquarium released Things Change, a record begging the listener to live in its characters. A man consoling his partner who devastatingly recognizes the “world is on fire.” Someone coming to the hard realization they are better off confronting their addictions. Characters wrestling with the unconscionable and somehow making sense of it. 

Things Change was strong enough that new realizations continue to bubble to the surface. My initial reaction to the news that American Aquarium was headed into the studio with Shooter Fucking Jennings was, “I get you have a lot to say BJ, but we ain’t done processing the last one.”

Things Change was released in 2018. Since then, the pace of the real world has accelerated to warp speed while the power of American Aquarium’s Things Change has kept pace. When BJ Barham removed the governor from his songwriting motor several years ago, the result was an ascendancy to the upper echelon of his generation of tunesmiths. 

Lamentations, American Aquarium’s latest release straddles the raucous honky tonk rock of early American Aquarium and the more socially conscious nature of Barham’s last collection of songs. The themes are familiar - hard work, substance abuse and sobriety, the South, sad stories. With Lamentations, Barham has taken another huge step forward in songcraft. 

As we have come to expect, the album opens with a kick-in-the-teeth tune that comes to a soaring, anthemic coda. These things usually need time to marinate before we declare superlatives. Nonetheless, the title track is Barham’s finest songwriting. “Me + Mine (Lamentations)” sets the tone for an album full of scorching hot songs that feel like they were recorded at an American Aquarium show somewhere in Texas, the band’s home away from home. 

If you have seen them there, you know what I mean. American Aquarium always brings it regardless of venue. BJ and the boys (this lineup and those past) are professionals who take their craft seriously. But, the band is fueled by the fervor of its fans and folks in Texas take it up a notch.

More than any other studio release, Lamentations captures the spirit of American Aquarium’s greatest live shows- a testament to the touch of producer Shooter Jennings. Shooter seems to be the bridge between early, raw American Aquarium and the renaissance that began with Burn. Flicker. Die.

Most importantly, Barham has taken another stride in his examination of the South. We are living in a time where a generation of southern writers are taking on the South with a warm demanding hand. Folks like the Bitter Southerner, Jason Isbell, Drive-by Truckers, Lee Bains III- the list is long and growing. A group of people who are not content to make excuses for the way things are and the way things were. 

“I believe in a better south,” Barham sings on the album’s eighth track. It is a tune showcasing his acute ability to use critical observation as a source of hope. Hope for a better South, a better nation, a more honest examination of the ills that plague us collectively and individually. Lamentations is more than a new American Aquarium record. It’s a manifesto of the power of our best instincts.

The Last Time I Saw John

John Prine played Orlando on December 6, 2019. Kelsey Waldon - John’s label mate, friend, and protege - graciously agreed to record an episode of my podcast before she and her band opened the show. We laughed and got serious and talked about beauty and art. We gushed about John Anderson, Lucinda Williams, and John Prine. The latter came up just as the sound of the man himself began to bleed into the dressing room in which we were recording.

It was my birthday and I couldn’t stop grinning. We opened the door to better hear Prine’s voice, maybe even get a little of it on the recording. Kelsey, who has heard John sing dozens of times, was nearly as excited as me at that moment.

On my way out I walked by the main stage. John was up there getting the lay of the land in a black t-shirt and jeans. I stopped and allowed myself a brief voyeur. It is probably tautological to say John Prine is an otherworldly, generational writer. Yet, he seemed remarkably human on that stage.

Here is a cancer survivor. A Grammy winner. A person who has inspired an uplifted some of the best talents we have in contemporary roots music.

John and I never met but all accounts are he straddled that rare air between being an authentic, down-to-earth guy and one who belongs in the pantheon of American writers. A normal person who was anything but.

Prine later put on one of the best shows I have seen in a really long time. A true master class in performance. I don’t remember which song it was, but at some point I started thinking about my grandmother. Inspiration struck while he was painting a picture of home and the comfort of simple pleasures in the way John Prine was able to do better than just about anyone.

John and my grandmother grew up in a similar time and place. The scene he set sent my hands to scribbling. Somehow it felt like John was giving me a gift, a mystical cowrite of sorts. By the end of his set, I had an all-but-finished song of my own. A poor imitation of John Prine to be sure, but one that means a ton to me.

A magical cowrite with John Prine probably sounds hokey to a lot of readers, but it’s the truth of how I felt then and now. If there is one thing I feel confident saying about John Prine, it’s that he put a premium on telling the truth through art.

Thank you for the years of inspiration, John. I hope your wristwatch is off and you are enjoying that vodka and ginger ale. We miss you like crazy.

Album Review | Kingdom in My Mind by The Wood Brothers

“The idea for this group has always been to marry our backgrounds, to imagine what might happen if Robert Johnson and Charles Mingus had started a band,” says Chris Wood of The Wood Brothers. Chris, his brother Oliver, and Jano Rix have melded genres while remaining anchored in American roots for nearly fifteen years. On their upcoming release Kingdom in My Mind, the ship takes flight tethered by the world’s longest rode.

Kingdom in My Mind does not ostensibly flow from previous Wood Brothers albums, yet from the first listen it feels like a logical next step. 2018’s One Drop of Truth was a departure from their normal recording process. It came together over a year period with multiple engineers at the helm. The result was an amalgamation of tunes that showcased the band as a unit. Each of their influences came through as an individual voice while blending into a gorgeous statement of an album. 

One Drop of Truth was nominated for a Grammy. Following that kind of reception would be daunting for most bands. The Wood Brothers are seemingly untroubled by such expectations. The band did not set out to make Kingdom in My Mind per se. The album began as an exploration of their new studio space in Nashville. 

They were jamming and getting oriented with the rooms of the studio. A group of musicians who know each other intimately, loosening their ties completely and exploring together. What happened was the inexplicable magic of music. Without meaning to, they had the bones of an album's worth of songs, which were later carved into their best work to date. 

Kingdom in My Mind kicks off with the funky, jazzy “Alabaster”- a song that captures the essence of The Wood Brothers and sets the tone for this record. It is a hopeful tune serving to open the listener’s imagination to the introspective places we so often live. 

“Little Bit Sweet” follows and lays the foundation for its sister song “Little Bit Broken” which comes later in the record. The tune starts almost like a jangly country blues number featuring Oliver Wood’s voice and guitar. Then Chris Wood’s bass and Jano’s special brand of percussion (complete with what sounds like a gong) come in to flip expectations on their heads. The song is a sonic divergence from the first track yet its place in the sequence of Kingdom of My Mind fits like a tailored suit. 

Midway through the record, the Brothers plant a flag cementing its theme. 

“Everyone has these little kingdoms in their minds,” says Chris Wood, “and the songs on this album all explore the ways we find peace in them. They look at how we deal with our dreams and our regrets and our fears and our loves. They look at the stories we tell ourselves and the ways we balance the darkness and the light.”

“When I’m lovin’ you I don’t think about my death” goes the chorus of the album’s main artery. The universality of our existential dread runs throughout this album. For some of us it’s a fear of not knowing what lies on the other side of our earthly demise. For others it’s the fear of leaving people behind. Death looms omnipresently and we all reckon differently with that reality. Only when we are truly present in the moment, when focused on a pure expression of love, can we escape the uneasiness that accompanies life and death.

Kingdom in My Mind explores tough questions with equanimity- uniting a multitude of sounds to create the most powerful expression in the storied catalog of The Wood Brothers. 

Kingdom in My Mind will be available everywhere you consume music on January 24, 2020.

The Wood Brothers- “Alabaster”

Thoughts on The Teenage Years of the 21st Century, an album by Micah Schnabel.

Sometimes, hell often, the constant barrage of information we consume can feel overwhelming. So many of us feel helpless watching from what seems like the sidelines, screaming our muffled voices and wishing for a sea change to wipe out the blatant corruption that assaults basic freedoms we once took for granted.

More than likely, if you read the above paragraph, you are a person who considers it uncontroversial. Maybe even tired. A bromide at this point. Thankfully, you don’t need to rely on me to express such sentiment in the way it deserves to be heard. Micah Schnabel continues to case the American condition in brutally honest and gorgeous prose with his latest record The Teenage Years of the 21st Century.

The bolts of this record are not new to fans of Schnabel’s work. The unmistakable sound of his voice. The tissue deep way in which he bares his feelings and thoughts. Those things are all consistently present in Micah Schnabel’s catalog and they ring true on this record.

What stands out is that he has taken another huge leap forward as a writer. One whose voice continually confronts its fears and anxieties. A voice punctuating conviction with poetry. 

It’s not easy hearing Schnabel sing about mobility justice, or the potential early unceremonious demise of those we love the most because they lack access to health care. Micah has always been gracious with his emotions for the sake of art. Perhaps never more so than on this record. 

Micah Schnabel’s work has aided a shift in my world paradigm. I was a libertarian-leaning registered Republican until the end of 2015, two years into my work with kids from underserved communities. Black kids in a racially segregated Southern town named after a genocidal former president. At that point, the Republican party had committed to an overtly racist platform, one that forced me to pay attention to not just race but class in this country.

I was reading Ta-nehisi Coates and Jeff Duncan-Andrade at the time. Both of whom heavily contributed to a reevaluation of how I viewed our political and social structures. In the summer of 2017, Youth Detention (Nail My Feet Down to the Southside of Town) by Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires and Your New Norman Rockwell by Micah Schnabel entered the canon of my personal midlife political revolution. Those records became the soundtrack for an unlikely transformation.

The characters in each of those albums were people I knew as a kid and folks I’d met as a thirty-something. People I viewed differently through the lens of time. In some ways, it took Schnabel’s Henry from his song and novel Hello, My Name is Henry and Bains’s young black girl who is just “too damn loud” for her teacher, to bridge that gap. 

The truth is, I’m a stubborn man. One who keeps an open mind but is nonetheless slow to change it. If nothing else, I am a thoughtful person. When I commit to an idea, it takes a person or movement for which I have a great deal of respect to shift that thinking. Ten years after I first started listening to Micah Schnabel, that shift has become tectonic.  

Schnabel has created an influential artistic world that deftly straddles fiction and real life. The protagonist in his excellent novel Hello, My Name is Henry reads a comic book called Memory Currency, which is also the title of my favorite song on The Teenage Years of the 21st Century. Micah has been playing it, and other songs from the album, live for a while now. The tune lays me out each time I hear it because I am confronted with Henry’s lessons on a regular basis. 

When we first recorded an Episode of The Marinade with Jason Earle, Micah said a number of things that made me reevaluate my worldview. I made a joke about people from Florida and Ohio being proud of the place from which they come. Micah’s whole demeanor changed. He said that being proud of the place from which you come is ridiculous. 

I was in my thirties. Well educated, well-read, and well-traveled by most of society’s standards. The simplicity of the statement and the way in which it was matter-of-factly delivered shook me. The fact that I had not fully considered such an obvious reality left me second-guessing a lot about how I viewed the world. Micah had not expressed a new idea to me, but I was not ready to holistically commit to an examination of my attitude about place until he challenged me. 

Micah Schnabel has a lot to say about place, class, policy, politics, humanity, and so much more on this record. He chooses words carefully but bares his heart with abandon. 

Maybe we are headed for “nuclear war.” Maybe the currency of our memories is all we will ever have left. None of it is easy to hear and Schnabel does not spare the listener many details of the peculiar times in which we live. 

Still, I find solace in the fact that, in spite of overwhelming messages to the contrary, there are a lot of powerfully convicted people like Micah Schnabel- courageously making art and treating it as their lifeblood. 

The Teenage Years of the 21st Century is triumphant, even if its namesake has not always gone that way.

Album Review | Rod Picott's Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil

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Rod Picott found himself free-soloing up a sheer face. The soles of his shoes slipping 2,000 feet above an abyss, imminent peril the likely result. While confronting impossible odds, Picott kept creating. And, after some semblance of normalcy was restored, he created some more. The result is a stunning work of art called Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil.

Picott has long been one of the great songwriters of his generation. His bonafides are well established, but this record cements him as something different. It is the best of an impressive catalog and there are a few clear reasons for that.

Born on either end of a major health scare, Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil is as raw as a fresh breakup wound, a reflection on the origin story of a man’s life as he stares down death and loneliness and wonders where to go from here. The record is not overly romantic. In fact, in parts it thumbs its nose at the notion of romanticizing life’s brutal bits.

The mood is one of sitting on a precipice looking down between dangling feet, taking in the struggle of of the climb. Celebrating progress while recognizing the mistakes that were and those that could have let to the catastrophic destruction of everything that matters.

The gift of this record is that it is a window into the thoughts and emotions of a great writer. Picott opens the cellar door on his fears, crutches, and desires. He leads us down the rickety steps of his psyche by shining a lantern on each rung. At the end of the journey we reach a room filled with hope. Not a dank, closed basement, but a space walled with doors and mirrors, reflections of ourselves leading to the possibility of self-discovery and improvement.

Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil demands heavy lifting from both artist and consumer. The work is rewarding. Rod Picott’s new record Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil comes out on July 19. Stay tuned to marinadepodcast.com for a conversation with the man himself starting July 5th. It’ll pair well with your Fourth of July hangover.

The Night I Opened for Eugene Snowden

“Most importantly I have learned that the voices, both internal and external, telling you your art is silly or unimportant are wrong.”

Photo by Philly Kennedy

by Jason Earle

J.J. Grey and Mofro is one of my all-time favorite live bands. The first time I saw them, circa 2004, they played with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, back when the band was just known as Mofro. The symphony players donned camouflage hats to mirror their “conductor” that night, J.J. Grey and his band’s southern swampy sound.

Thus began over a decade long love affair with Jacksonville’s Mofro. A couple shows, a few dozen beers, and a year or two later, I saw Mofro at what used to be called Common Grounds in Gainesville, FL. Bands like Avail and Against Me! used to pack the place in the 1990s when it was in some other incarnation. It’s a big room that feels like a mini high school cafetorium. The opener that night was a band called the Legendary JC’s.

My practice is to watch the opener whenever possible. That’s how I learned about Joe Pug, Matthew Fowler, and countless other musicians I love. The Legendary JC’s were unfamiliar to me but anyone hitched to J.J. Grey and Mofro was worth a listen. The JC’s is a band fronted by Central Florida musical legend Eugene Snowden.

Eugene Snowden is a force of fucking nature, now, fifteen years later. A decade and a half ago he was a sexual dynamo who wailed on the microphone, made love to it, then abandoned its embrace to leap off the stage into a split on the dance floor. That’s not a hyperbolic metaphor. He literally did all of the above as an opening act. Never before or since have I seen someone upstage J.J. Grey. Eugene did it that night.

Opening the Portal

The Marinade has opened a lot of creative doors for me. For my partner in life. For my friends. My family. The Marinade is a portal. A way that things I never thought possible could come true. I’ve interviewed and become buddies with creative heroes. I’ve seen my favorite bands from just feet away.

Most importantly I have learned that the voices, both internal and external, telling you your art is silly or unimportant are wrong.

If ten people listen to the show and think it matters, or they learn something, then damnit it matters. But, if no one listens, it still matters. It matters for all the cliche reasons but also because we are nothing without art.

The show J.J. and his band played with the symphony might as well have been tomorrow it’s so fresh. Eugene’s split does not happen anymore but that does not matter. It resides in my memory and every time he does some bat shit wild thing on stage now, I am transported to that moment when I was creatively stifled but there were people like Eugene Snowden and J.J. Grey who let me escape to a place where I could not otherwise travel. I could not do what they were doing but no matters of the ego would survive that moment.

Uncovering the Well

The song you hear playing in the background of The Marinade intro is by Explosions in the Sky. It’s called “First Breath After Coma.” You may not have noticed it the first twenty-plus times you heard the intro, but now it’ll be dialed in. The song is an ear worm of the best sort.

That intro was recorded on a whim. My partner Kris had just gifted me mic stands, a present that ranks among my favorite to this day. She put a ton of thought into what I might need while recording intros and outros, or while having people over for interviews.

We were hanging out late one night and I enthusiastically asked her to play around with our new recording setup. On her worst day, Kris is my favorite singer. Her singing blends pain with hope and ties the two in a bow of universal class. That’s how I fell in love with her. All of that.

She has always supported my creative endeavors, but those mic stands sent a message that she was all in on my creative pursuits. And, her subsequent renderings of my logo concepts proved to me that I was on to something with The Marinade. If Kris likes it, or at least supports it, then I have a chance.

Years of writing, interviewing, and recording later, The Marinade reached a place where we not only had our feature episodes, but a few tendrils to manicure as well. One of those vines is our website exclusive episodes. Episode 4 of that series is with the incredible songwriter Amy McCarley.

A Push From New Friends

Interviews are almost never bad. I’m okay at this by now. But, some are amazing. Sometimes you hit a flow of sorts. My website exclusive episode with Amy McCarley was one of those moments. During our conversation, I mentioned that I had some songs written but they had not been consumed by anyone other than me and a few select girlfriends over the years. To which she basically replied, tighten up and put yourself out there.

Barley and Vine Biergarten is my home base. A local bar where everyone knows all your shit - the good and the not-so-good - and they want you to succeed. A week after my conversation with Amy, I showed up to play some original songs only to find that open mic was cancelled. I told Amy what happened and she said not to give up, to give it another go in a week or so. The same thing happened to her the first time she tried to play an open mic.

Two weeks later, I was preparing to emcee the Rockin’ Robinson music festival, an easy excuse not to face my anxiety about playing. It’s not that I don’t think my songs are any good, or that I don’t like my voice. It’s that I feel like a poseur. I can’t help comparing myself to these brilliant musicians I work with, a standard of which I fall well short.

Meanwhile, my episode with Amy went live and I sent her the links. In her response to my note, she asked about whether I had gotten up to play! Persistently, lovingly, asking if I faced my anxieties and got up there.

It was good, tough medicine. I showed up again at the end of a really labor-intensive week, with all the excuse in the world to skip out again.

Photo by Philly Kennedy

Showtime

The place is packed but the sandwich board out front says the bar is closed for a private party, and will reopen at 8:00. It is 7:51. I am hungry, haven’t eaten since noon. I need to go for a run. There is time for both. I could go for a quick run and grab a snack. No, if I leave now I will probably conveniently run out of time and not be able to play. I could just scrap the whole thing for now. The universe seems to be conspiring against me and this open mic will always be here. If not this one, another.

No, today has to be the day. I will email Amy and tell her I am thinking about backing down but am going to get up there and play this time. That will give me some accountability.

The room comes together quickly. There is still an hour till open mic is slated to begin. And, this being rock n’ roll, who knows what time it will actually start. Philly runs the open mic and knows I want to go up early so he puts me first on the list. I decide one beer would be good. No more than one.

Several friends are here. I guess they were watching some kind of documentary about the racial history of Orlando. That’s good. My first song is about racial injustice. I feel a little better about what is going to happen. It is comforting to see so many buddies in attendance. So is Eugene Snowden.

My name is called. I take the stage to some surprised looks on the faces of people who have known me for years and had no idea I played or sang. I fumble with my guitar. We finally get it figured out.

I’ve written a ton of tunes, played a few of them for people, and mostly filtered the ones that are universally appreciated by captive, sympathetic audiences. Again, I think art is mostly about the artist’s need to express something. How it is received should not be overly fretted. But, if you don’t like something then it probably should not go out in the world.

I’ve got one tune I know is good, one that is an acquired taste, and an a cappella cover I know I can crush. I am going to play them in that order - the powerful tune I love, the easier one I like, and then see whether the crowd is ready for the a cappella curveball.

The first song is called Brenton Butler. It’s a true story about a black teenage boy who was wrongly accused of murder in Jacksonville circa 2000. It’s a tough song to hear and sing but the crowd is ready for it and so am I. The whole place is cheering. I damn near get a standing ovation and Eugene Snowden of Legendary JCs fame, he who upstaged JJ Grey one night in Gainesville fifteen years ago is cheering as loud as anyone.

So fired up is he, as I stand here giddily grinning, that Eugene puts his name on the list to play next. I do my other two songs, finishing off with the Saul Williams cover as Eugene leads the room in a clap-along, and take my place among friends to watch Eugene Snowden follow me on stage.

That is the tale of how I opened for Eugene Snowden.

Album Review | Reed Foehl's Lucky Enough

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“We’ve all got holes to fill/Them holes are all that’s real” -Townes Van Zandt

Reed Foehl’s excellent album “Lucky Enough” (available 2/1/19) takes the listener on an existential journey to fill life’s holes. Written at an impossibly difficult time in Foehl’s life, while he was caring for his mother who was battling cancer, Foehl would be understood for writing a melancholy record. Lucky Enough ducks expectation. It does not feel melancholy. It feels settled. Not resigned, but at peace with life’s challenges and tribulations.

The common current running through Lucky Enough is acceptance. Going out and searching for something to make us whole. The album is sequenced as the tale of a person navigating existence, learning lessons, failing and growing, and finally finding a place and a person who fills in the holes.

Lucky Enough kicks off with the infectious melody of lovers “Stealing Starlight,” lyrics about the simple pleasures of life. The “taste of Basil Hayden’s” on the tongue. Footprints washed away in the sand. Sleeping in together. Stealing starlight.

But, as restless spirits are wont to do, our narrator takes off cross country clicking through “American Miles.” It’s a cinematic tune a la Bon Iver. A restive tale that acknowledges all the narrator loves is all he knows.

Who knows what we are going to encounter on that road; that American road, the one serving as a metaphor for our life’s journey. The journey is long yet it feels at times like it is flying by too quickly to grasp. It “takes a long time to make old friends,” our narrator tells us. And, really, we are just “charting the courses of carousel horses,” lost in this day-to-day.

Sometimes we feel we should be “on an Island” like the protagonist in the opening track to Lucky Enough’s side B. He admonishes us to remember that “You don’t know me till you can walk in my shoes.” But an island is no place for a battle.

Our struggles can seem so enormous yet really we ultimately “running out of nothing left to do.” A regiment of blinding agents keeps us moored to our carousel. None of us on our own really knows what we are doing. We need each other to navigate this world.

Foehl employs an almost whimsical feel to help his narrator work through this existential angst on the heavy yet fun “I Wish I Knew.” Ultimately, the heady musings of Lucky Enough come to the realization that what we all need is someone or some group of souls to fill in our holes. We can only do so much on our own. Once we have rambled the miles, made and lost friends, endured the day-to-day, and run out of nothing left to do we are faced with ourselves. Our strengths, our insecurities, our charms, our anxieties- all of it needs the tempering influence of people we love.

Lucky Enough ends with the arresting “Color Me In.” “What will you do with me, my darlin’?” Foehl’s narrator asks, followed by an entreaty to come and lay with him, to relish the moment they have together. Together they can make it. No, together they will make it. What may not be possible alone is attainable with someone there to fill the holes.

-Jason Earle

Overdue Review | Elizabeth Cook's Exodus of Venus

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Elizabeth Cook’s Exodus of Venus is a grilled pimento cheese sandwich dipped in a Sriracha bath- all the comfort of Southern delicacies served up by grandma but with enough fire and rebellion to be easily confused as something other than a country staple. Cook sticks to the truth part of country music’s three chords and the truth formula, but her impact on the consumer cannot be reduced to bromides.

Exodus of Venus is a brilliant record. A record about place- geographical, metaphysical, spiritual, monumentally multi-dimensional. Her descriptions of life’s travails carry that most-desirable musical quality- relatability.

Whether she is talking about breaking down in London or visiting houses of ill repute in Central Florida, Cook has the ability to make any situation feel applicable to the listener’s life. There is a nugget of wisdom in each tune. Some are hard-earned lessons, others the kind we all experience but struggle to express.

The first half of Exodus of Venus is about getting away- releasing, escaping. “Exodus of Venus',” “Dyin’,” “Evacuation,” “Dharma Gate,” “Slow Pain,” even the titles suggest a journey away from current circumstances, a getaway from perceived reality. My mother had a family friend once tell her that you spend the first half of your life trying to get away from home and the second doing whatever you can to return. I have learned not to take such advice literally. Home is more than the place we were raised.

Exodus of Venus takes us home to heal on side B. Much of the record describes places in and around where Cook was reared. “Methadone Blues” ostensibly describes trips to the methadone clinic in Jacksonville, FL, but its message of continually chasing elusive relief could refer to the struggles of folks imprisoned by myriad circumstances around the world. The fact that Cook writes what she knows gives us a foothold for our own spiritual climb wherever we may need it.

“Orange Blossom Trail” is a tune set just down the road from Cook’s native Wildwood. OBT as it is colloquially know, is a stretch notorious for its prostitutes and drugs. Cook’s “Orange Blossom Trail,” much like “Straightjacket Love” before it, juxtaposes that setting with comforting companionship- a sordid tale buoyed by a shoulder-shaking melody and infectious hook.

The record ends with the heartbreaking yet hopeful “Tabitha Tuder’s Mama,” a song about missing children, a story all-too-often repeated in headlines today. While the story of Tabitha, who went missing in 2003 at the age of thirteen is a painful one, the message of the chorus is to pray, “even if you don’t pray at all.” We can blow up our own world. So long as we survive we have a chance to get back.

Maybe we need to return to the physical place we were raised, to a spiritual understanding of ourselves, or to awareness that bad things happen but we must keep fighting for answers. Exodus of Venus is the soundtrack to that fight.

-Jason Earle

2018 in Review | The Books

In 2018, I finally sought therapy for the anxiety that has plagued most of my life. 
Doing so was one of the best decisions I have made and I am grateful to have access to a really good therapist, as well as the support of my inner circle.

Getting mental health help can be daunting. Looking back, I felt like if I was committed to getting help then I would no longer have anxiety as an excuse or explanation for some of my more anti-social and self-destructive tendencies. 
I was wrong, of course. Well, I was right about not having an excuse or explanation, but that was true before I sought help.

I was wrong about therapy being daunting. It is a lot of work, which is good. BJ Barham and I talked on Episode 1 of The Marinade about the value of hard work. The phrase 'hard work' evokes images of the grindstone and a swinging hammer. 
The work I have done on myself this year has been equally exhausting but also liberating.

I am far from done. This work is a never ending cycle of discovery, struggle, and revelation. 
One such revelation has been that I know I am at my best when I write, read, and exercise regularly. That's it. If I do those things, the other stuff takes care of itself.

So, I set out to read more. I have always devoured books but my heroes are voracious consumers of words and ideas. I knew I could do more.

I did not keep count of the books I read. I am too prone to competition to do something like that. It would interfere with my enjoyment. 
Safe to say, I read as much as needed. This list reflects the books that really stuck with me.

Cheers and love in 2019, y'all.

-Jason Earle

Album Review | Hawks and Doves "From a White Hotel"

Kasey Anderson sets the tone for his record From a White Hotel within the first minute. Just over forty seconds in he sings, “They gonna stack up the dead till they black out the sun/These white boys with money make the whole world run”

The establishment is clearly in Anderson’s cross hairs on From a White Hotel, the first release from his band Hawks and Doves. Not strictly a protest record, but one that will not overlook the current administration’s bigotry and absence of empathy. From a White Hotel’s agenda feels rooted in hope and opportunity, a commitment to examining the ugly bits along with the good, in finding humanity from characters who American society puts in boxes convenient for cognitive dissonance - freak, degenerate, lazy - and throws into a forgotten pile with others deemed unfavorable.

This is a record that lays the characters, the listener, and the album’s narrator bare. It is a record of unification- bringing together what it means to be “American,” to be human. From a White Hotel is a white-hot rock n’ roll record. It is a return to form for Anderson, the writer and performer who just embarked on his first tour in several years. From a White Hotel is also the best thing Anderson has done in his critically acclaimed career.

The album has no holes. Its sequence takes the listener on a hopeful journey through heartache, confusion, loss, lust, love, and resilient fight. Anderson’s tunes are tough for this author to leave as background music. Every stanza is dripping with imagery to which those of us who write regularly aspire.

We could pluck examples from nearly any spot on the record to illustrate this point. The title track provides one such example. The song begins with spare percussion and the strum of a guitar chord. The arrangement of the tune lays Anderson’s gravelly voice and powerful imagery bare. He paints a scene of national disaster in the first verse. The second brings us closer to home, letting us into the narrator’s intimate fantasies.

“Way back in my travelin’ days I kissed a girl in San Antone/She was every faded fantasy I called upon when I was alone/But I’ll leave that here in this old house with everything I own and set it on fire”

Moving on, not just away from the past but toward something better, more meaningful. “From a White Hotel” is perhaps the most personal song on the album and one to which there is so much for the listener to attach. This album is not only our favorite Kasey Anderson effort, it is one of our favorite albums of the year thus far. If enough great records come along to knock it from its perch in the next six months, well that will be a very nice problem to have.

-Jason Earle