JD Graham - A Pound Of Rust
Self-released
*****
On first hearing, JD Graham would appear to be an artist that’s prone to bask in simplicity. After all, the dozen songs on his new album rely solely on songs played on acoustic guitar, sometime with wafting pedal steel, but just as often without too much additional embellishment. Given the fact that these barebones performances suffice, any hint of too much extra instrumentation never needs further consideration. This man is country to the bone. Every step he takes carries heartache, hardcore livin’ and a bit of the mystery similar to that which clouds around the legacy of Hank Williams. A POUND OF RUST is not intended to be a universally relatable body of work, but rather an intimate confession to heavy topics that have touched his life. JD’s own story is as rich and winding as the stories he weaves in his songs. Growing up in Yukon, Oklahoma, he was a drug addict by the time he hit his teens. Though music was his solace, his addiction held him back from any kind of success, and even led to a five-year spell in prison. He has seen through the tattered veil that clothes the American dream, and it has led to a plea for a renewal based on something more tangible and anchored in overcoming his 25-year-long addiction following a wake-up call during his incarceration.
Ragged yet tight, sprawling yet focused, it’s a singular vision of a disparate time in his life. JD Graham emerges as a sharp, succinct, inventive and insightful songwriter, one who can convey intimate, personal and complex ideas with just a few words. For a life informed by heartbreak, brushes with the law, substance abuse, and overdosing, he finds value in the process of confession and healing. For such deeply confessional storytelling JD and co-producers Neilsen Hubbard and Ryan Culwell hold the album focus on pensive, raw-boned ballads. The value of and search for truth is entrenched in these songs. With a casually devastating voice and unshakable poise, JD Graham is bound to be the next great Americana star ... after I picked my jaw off the ground, I immediately put him on my radar.
Sitting at the centre of the album, the lyrics across Letter From My Conscience are profoundly specific, immersing the listener in JD’s history, yet still allowing them to see themselves in it. To simple, acoustic finger-pickin’, this is a courageous song of brutally honest self-appraisal of all the wrong turns taken in a reckless, messed-up, drug-addled life. The more melodic A Pound Of Rust has him working hard on himself, tryin’ to be a whole new man. An entrancing ballad that grounds feelings of guilt and pain by looking deep inside a litany of the numerous highways he’s travelled to get to where he is today.
West Virginia is an aching number of a lost romantic opportunity with a stripped-down arrangement of fingerstyle and slide guitar, plus JD’s world-weary delivery of his existential blues. As he lays out the desolate life he lives working an oil-rig, pining for the girl he let go, his voice sounds cracked and worn, as if it has itself been carved from an old battered timber. There’s more heartbreak to bear with Her Memory as he creates dire, intense images, made more haunting by his lyrical clues to his girl’s end as he’s ‘cried myself a river and is drowning in her memory.’ Backdrops of muted keyboards and strands of guitar heighten the drama, but the foreground holds firmly on his delicate yet pained and expressive vocals.
This guy is a fierce storyteller, whether he’s vividly setting the scene of a wild childhood in Yukon (Running Through Me), finding empathy and humanity for a fellow drug addict (Adeline) or a sad, dead-end yarn of a fall from grace (Sidewalk Bobby). JD Graham certainly knows the power of a song. This is music that will be just as relevant decades from now as it is today.
June 2023