featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
January 14, 2022
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Zach Chance and Jonathan Clay have been recording music as Jamestown Revival since before they disappeared into a Wasatch log cabin and emerged with their 2014 debut, Utah. 2016's Education of a Wandering Man borrowed its name from a Louis L'Amour memoir, a theme that followed the duo through last year's Fireside EP which set the Western author's short stories to music. In between was San Isabel, set to tape in another cabin for a 2019 release. Not much triangulation is required to identify Chance and Clay as lovers of spaces and places, serial wanderers and thinkers of worthy thoughts.
Jamestown Revival call their fourth full-length studio project the quietest record of their career, their first sessions recorded without electric guitar and with a fiddle. Young Man floats in on a coyote's cry and a cloud of pedal steel, a campfire Western that might just as well have been sung to the stars generations ago. It's almost surprising then that Young Man, produced by Texas piano man Robert Ellis, is also Jamestown Revival's first true studio record.
The quiet that cushions new songs like "Old Man Looking Back" brings the trademark harmonies of Chance and Clay to the fore. A cowrite with Ellis, the track addresses the album's focus on putting aside youthful distractions and looking towards the lessons that come with experience. Their CSNY-esque vocals also characterize the seeming companion piece, "Young Man". The narrator catches an unfamiliar reflection in a stream: Where did the young man go / The one in the water that I used to know ... Ten years time and a wiser mind / It seems his world has changed. That newly added fiddle grounds the song in tradition. An earlier video shows the expanded cohort gathered around a single mic, bare feet sunk in sand on the Mississippi banks.
The sense of expansive space on Young Man echoes from lyric to arrangement, enhanced by free range pedal steel on tracks like "Northbound". The band relaxes into the smoky haze on the lazy roadsong, leaving their native Texas for higher locales: A mountain road, a little town / Outside of nowhere. "Working on Love" twines steel and fiddle for an unhurried pastoral vista: Rain gonna come bring life from the sand / I'm working on love like I'm working on the land.
As they've proven since their debut, Jamestown Revival aren't a dull band. Even with the noise dialed way back, their new collection manages to avoid the dimensional limitations of duos such as Milk Carton Kids. The slinky "Moving Man" teases out the lower end of the scale in the spirit of the Wood Brothers. "Slow It Down" and "These Days" highlight the country side of Young Man's musical balance. With a much less mannered approach, the latter hints towards the earlier work from Chance and Clay, suggesting the Jayhawks in rural setting.
As we're reminded in "Way It Was", things are always changing. Like every other longtime road band, the pandemic has allowed Jamestown Revival a moment of reset, some downtime to reconsider commitments and to reconnect with the thread that led them to embrace the creative life a decade ago. We can't seem to let it be / We're manifest anxiety they sing. This restlessness is what can fuel a band and inspire it to artistic heights. It's what prompted Zach Chance and Jonathan Clay to pare back their rich sound to those harmonies and a fingerpicked acoustic guitar. That's what makes Young Man just the right sigh of a record as we wander hopefully into the new year.
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And we're certainly ready for the opening bell of 2022, as new music announcements begin to land on our digital doorstep. You'll find the complete accounting on A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster. We'll mention just a handful of especially promising entries, including an inspirational EP from Allison Moorer. Due February 11 (Autoelic), Wish For You features Moorer's songs based on melodies created by the artist's autistic son John Henry. This week brought a February 25 release date for one of the early year's more promising releases. Carson McHone's Still Life arrives courtesy of Merge Records. Hailey Whitters has brought us some of the strongest country music of the past few years. She's announced that Raised is ready for a March 18 debut (Pigasus). Great to hear that Ian Noe has prepared his follow-up to 2019's sensational debut. Expect River Fools & Mountain Saints to arrive March 25 (Lock13). Finally, we're fans of Morgan Geer and the music he creates as Drunken Prayer. Fluff & Gravy will be presenting The Name of the Ghost is Home on April 22.
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