Artist:     Jason Eady

Album:     Travel On

Label:     Old Guitar

Release Date:     8.10.2018

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Emerging country singer-songwriter Jason Eady’s stature grows with each release. Eady has shown both a command of blues-infused Americana and classic country with contemporary touches. In his sixth album and he digs his acoustic roots even deeper, letting his songwriting assume center stage. The sound has a warmth and comfort that’s a welcome relief from so much overproduced fare heard on the airwaves. Eady’s bar has been set quite high from 2014’s Daylight/Dark, an album that’s been compared by some to Joe Ely’s Letter to Laredo or Dwight Yoakam’s Buenos Noches from a Lonely Room—high praise indeed. This one follows last year’s self-titled effort.

First impression, if you haven’t heard the Mississippi-bred, Ft. Worth-based Eady before, is the robust quality of Eady’s voice. It has all the prerequisites of great country singers: tenderness, grit, emotion, and resonance. His music this time out is more grove-laden, a little looser, and maybe even a bit livelier, which can be attributed to the backing of his road band. It marks the first time Eady’s done a record this way. His rhythm section is made up of players with an R&B/roots background with the lead players steeped in bluegrass. They are joined in the studio by the Grammy-nominated duo of Rob Ickes (Dobro) and Trey Hensley (guitar). “One of the best things about making this album is that it was done live – just six guys with acoustic instruments sitting in a room together, playing these songs we’d been working out for while on the road,” said Eady.

Co-produced with longtime collaborator Kevin Welch, Eady wrote these songs in one month of a hefty creative burst. He didn’t pick from an array of songs, but wrote them specifically for this record. The album gets off to a rousing start with the foot-stomping “I Lot My Mind in Carolina.” The single “Calveras County” is an ode to wandering through California’s Gold Coast with Eady’s wife, Courtney Patton, on the keening harmonies, as she is on several tunes. These upbeat songs are contrasted by the trance-like, haunting “Always a Woman,” perhaps his best vocal performance, as he reflects on love and regret, ending on a hopeful note.

Eady tackles both serious subjects and just plain fun. The bluegrass waltz “Below the Waterline” tries to explain the random nature of natural disasters, but in “Pretty When I Die” (co-written with singer-songwriter Justin Wells) Eady has a more tangible message. He suggests we play it loose sometimes, rather than being so cautious that life passes us by.

Eady said this about the record, “Now it’s about getting better and finding more of myself with every album. So instead of writing what I think people want to hear, I’m writing what I want to write and trusting that—as long as it’s coming from an honest place—it’ll hopefully mean something to the people listening too.” In that vein he purposely leaves us wanting more in the open-ended closing title track.

There’s no doubt that Eady has found his comfort zone. The uncluttered arrangements and unforced delivery reveal the strength of Eady’s lyrics and stories.

—Jim Hynes