As many of you may know, 2020 started off with my dream of playing the Grand Ole Opry coming true. I was on a role that was years in the making. When things shut down, we kept playing as many outlaw bars and renegade parties as we could. These rebel gigs (combined with live streams) kept me afloat for a good while but by the time 2021 rolled around, it was obvious I needed a real job! In February 2021, by the grace of God, I got on with a construction crew building a new sewage treatment plant in Nashville.
So, I went from the Grand Ole Opry to a shit plant in a little over a year! Lol. Sounds bad but it’s great! I had spent the last six years playing at least five gigs a week, so by the time I got home, music was usually the last thing on my mind. It’s been five years since I recorded a whole album all at once - and I got this new one done after just four months of being on a construction site. Sometimes you gotta change it up! There’s a lot of good material to build country songs with walking around a construction site!
Between the job site and the neon light, I’ve been around some crazy characters this past year. I wrote most of this album on characters that are a version of me or someone I know. There’s a homeless drunk vet, a laid-off pipeline worker, a cheater, a gambler, a hillbilly, a preacher, a cowboy, and more! Along with these brand-new songs, we’ve included the four single cuts that came out last year to bring the total number of songs to 16.
I’ve been blessed to meet some crazy good musicians over the years, but none of them are as good as my buddy Mike Rogers. Mike is the newest member of Ricky Skaggs’ band, Kentucky Thunder, and he’s also the producer of this album. He and I became friends about 6 years ago while we were both playing at the George Jones Museum. Since then, we’ve done a whole bunch of gigs and recordings together. Mike is a world-class multi-instrumentalist, and probably THE best male country harmony singer in the galaxy. For this record, he set up sessions with the best country players around: Brent Mason, Buddy Hyatt, Lonnie Wilson, Joe Spivey, Jenee Fleenor, and more. The band captured all the good nuance on my work tapes and the tracks are slamming!
For the cover, I chose Nick Rau for the photo (great dude!) and I employed the lady who is most visually pleasing to me (my wife) for the layout. She is also technically responsible for everything else that makes this record available for y’all to listen. I can sing and play ok but there’s no way I could do this without her.
The touring and bar singing seems to be pretty well back in full swing for now. Me and the boys are picking and traveling as much as we can stand and I’m still showing up to the construction job site for now, at least until this new record gets certified Gold!
This album ain’t for everyone - and it ain’t supposed to be, but if you like character stories set to good (country) music you might think it’s cool!
James