Glide Magazine: Jerry Joseph Makes A Vital NYC Sounding Record (ALBUM REVIEW)
We’re splitting hairs taking issue with singer-songwriter Jerry Joseph’s producer choices. On Baby, You’re the Man Who Would Be King he opts for the respected producer, the hard rocking, alt-country Eric “Roscoe: Ambel and the best roots rockers in NYC versus the literate songwriter Patterson Hood and the rugged attack of the Drive-by Truckers on his 2020 breakthrough The Beautiful Madness. Rest assured that Joseph is in good hands. And, given that Joseph had a goal of making a “NYC sounding” record, he called on the right guy.
Joseph and Ambel had met in February of 2018 when their bands shared the stage at a gig in Brooklyn and the two forged a bond that Joseph tapped into. Ambel recruited the musicians you often see on the best roots/Americana albums originating in NYC – bassist Jeremy Chatzky, drummer Phil Cimino, E-Street Band keyboardist Charlie Giordano, with Casey Neil and Mary Lee Kortes on harmony, Joe Flood on fiddle, and Cody Nilsen on pedal steel. Ambel played assorted guitars, keyboards, percussion, and harmony vocals.
Joseph arrived with a batch of songs that he had written during the pandemic in a vintage camping trailer parked in his driveway. He was striving for more simplicity in the songs and envisioned them to be rendered in an acoustic harmonica-in-the-rack Springsteen way. The opener “The War I Finally Won” encapsulates this vision with Joseph on acoustic guitar with the harmonica, Cimino laying down insistent beats, and Giordano playing Mary Lee Kortes’ Hammond A-100 organ. Like most of Joseph’s songs, it’s abstract but he was fighting procrastination and disappointment about not being able to tour his career-defining album due to the pandemic – “Some days just accept the battle/Hide in the trees or get back in the saddle/Spit up blood with an old man’s rattle/Another day’s begun”
“The Man Who Would Be King” is a stomping, upbeat harmonica-laced ode to perseverance and survival with a repetitive refrain of “We’re gonna get through this” that could be applied to stormy conditions, literal or otherwise. The tempo slows for “20 20 Moons,” which speaks to the desperation on trying to preserve a relationship, akin in some sense to Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” but stacked with far better wordplay and delivered in Joseph’s roughly hewn, cigarette scarred, but consistently passionate vocal.
The steady rocking “Book Burning” is a metaphorical expression of welled-up anger in putting a relationship behind him, extinguishing all vestiges of memory. The sound gets very sparse, just his harmonica and the piano that opens “Canadian Boyfriend,” one of the weaker tracks in that lacks the hooks and indelible choruses that imbue most of the others. Joseph, possibly in his quest to find some relief during those shut-down days, lands on the image of the “Brazilian Bombshell,” the popular singer, famed for her signature fruit hat in “Carmen Miranda,” assuring us that if nothing else, he can still dance as the band drives hard to those particular words.
The upbeat “Am I Okay” has perhaps the most infectious melody in this batch of nine, making it impossible to not sing along with Joseph in that enduring three-word refrain. Ambel adds the right touch with his tremolo-soaked guitar solo while Giordano’s swirling organ and the swelling background vocals add to the bliss. The third single “Loving Kindness” is another potent one, though on a far more serious level. It’s about forgiveness, the ability to forgive oneself, a theme touched on in some of the earlier tracks but according to Joseph, inspired by fear at a time when “we were expecting then President Trump to call on the Proud Boys and local militias to ‘liberate’ Portland.” Fortunately, he shies away from those details in the song, instead singing it like it might be the last one he ever sings. He goes out in rocking form with “Leaving the Lights On,” rife with yet another indelible chorus that will linger for days. While he’s assertively protective, he also seems by turns scared, angry, or relieved.
Like the best singer-songwriters, Joseph’s songs are open to multiple interpretations. The collaboration with Ambel fits naturally. It’s another gem, and a as potent a follow-up as we could hope for.