Artist:     Rusty Tinder

Album:     Dear to You

Label:     RiverFork Entertainment

Release Date:     5.11.19

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Cheaper than going to a psychologist, Dear to You is good, honest medicine for the heart and the soul. It doesn’t have any dangerous side effects, and it’s all organic, a series of dramatic and emotionally powerful contemporary folk and country home remedies—some spare and intimate, others lushly rendered—concocted by piano man Rusty Tinder.

“I am the valley that lays down/you are the river that never stays still,” croons Tinder on a slow, winding “Never Stays Still,” where he coaxes unspoken meaning out of lustrous piano chords and paints cinematic scenery with evocative lyrics. Similarly cast, the surging “You’re Still Mine” is an affecting country ballad that’s pretty and romantic, like the yearning “Dear to You,” which finds Tinder tenderly plucking away on a lonely ukulele. “Dear to You” floated through the independent feature film “Cicada,” along with the shuffling, softly incandescent “Got Me in a Bind,” a lovesick daydream that appears to have fallen under the spell of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” The light, easygoing “From the Start” also made an appearance, as did the rip-roaring, honky-tonk epic “Don’t Grow Old in Hollywood,” a wild-eyed catharsis of fiery fiddle, pounding ivories and a zig-zagging electric guitar shooting spree talking of California dreams and taking youthful risks. Dear to You holds tightly to all of these lost souls.

For Tinder, songwriting is a healing exercise, useful in dealing with the death of a father, cutting away cancerous people from his orbit, reviving dead relationships or simply navigating love’s choppy waters. A defiant Tinder emerges in the smoldering blues of “Don’t Tell Me What to Do,” as corrosive harmonica seethes, while the apocalyptic “If I Believe in You” challenges religious dogma amid smoking fields of sonic ruins and dirty guitar distortion. It’s quite a change from the relaxed, country-pop swing of “Passing You By,” but that’s Tinder.

A restless auteur with a big-picture aesthetic and a sense of wonder, Tinder also has a gift for gathering an ensemble of top-notch musicians seemingly always in tune with his ever-changing moods. That’s something that can’t be taught.

—Peter Lindblad