It’s hard for me to explain how excited – and honestly how nervous – I am to be releasing new original music after such a long time. Music is always exciting – or at least should be – but in this case, the “band,” The Wayside, that I have had with my wife Michelle is unveiling two new songs, “Ghost In The Needle” and “Not OK At All,” that I believe are among the best songs I have ever written. The fact that my good friends Steve Hindalong (of The Choir and The Lost Dogs) and Jimmy Abegg (of Vector, A Ragamuffin Band, and The Perfect Foil) have contributed to these recordings, along with newer friends Dan Wheeler and Hunter Spivey is just beyond. Producer Matt Goldman, who has been a friend for a long time as well and became quite well known for his work with hard bands like Underoath and The Chariot, also has a history with bands like Luxury and even spent time playing with Vigilantes of Love and others. When he offered to help record these songs I jumped at the chance.

Before I started the original True Tunes – as a record store, concert venue, magazine, and mail-order company, and before I started promoting concerts around the Chicago area or writing articles or books, I was a kid with a guitar in a band. I wrote songs and scrounged for places to play them. The fact is, one of the main reasons I even started True Tunes in the first place was because I thought it was inconceivable that artists like The 77s, Daniel Amos, Mark Heard, and The Choir were limited to playing in churches and begging for scraps from a Christian music industry that didn’t want them around anyway. I heard profoundly spiritual ideas – even Gospel ideas – permeating some of the best rock, soul, folk, and country music of the past. Prior to the creation of a separate genre called “contemporary Christian music” in the late 70s (which I believe was more about who that music was for than what it was,) artists explored those ideas all the time in “mainstream” music. As a kid in the 80s I found role models in figures such as Bruce Cockburn, The Alarm, The Innocence Mission, Simple Minds, The Call, Robbie Robertson, Tonio K, T Bone Burnett, and of course, U2 – along with those previously mentioned artists that I felt had been unfairly stuck in the CCM ghetto. I think I knew that if those artists were struggling to make ends meet and finding it so difficult to connect with enough listeners that they could sustain a career, what hope did I have? I knew, though, that there had to be more people like me out there. There just had to be. I was right. Everything I did with True Tunes was about creating a different way to talk about and engage with music; a way that was more open, inviting, risky, and – I felt – more honest.

My buddy Rob and I started playing music together long before all that, though. After a few years of work, we got good enough to earn opening slots for many of our heroes. We shared stages with Steve Taylor, Charlie Peacock, Jacob’s Trouble, LSU, Terry Scott Taylor, The 77s, and more. We eventually became a sort of “house band” at True Tunes and later a regular at the Gallery Stage at Cornerstone. By the mid-90s, the band had become my wife Michelle and me – with a rotating cast of friends filling in the supporting roles. With some critical encouragement from our friend and mentor, Buddy Miller, we decided to throw caution to the wind and dive deeply into the rootsy, country-tinged rock and folk music that we both loved. The term “Americana” was just starting to be used to describe our kind of music – and some people called us Alt-Country. Others still called it Roots Rock. It may have seemed like a departure, but if you somehow find a copy of our closest thing to a “hit” – a twangy, jumpy little number called “One Raindrop” that I wrote in the late 80s and that we recorded on our first album in 1991, you’ll see that the Country-Rock thing was always there. In 1999 we released a gritty, difficult album called Farm. That was the last full, original, studio album we have released. There have been a few false starts, some covers, some demos, and a lovely album full of Gospel and worship songs, but it has been over two decades since we have released fully-formed original Wayside songs. That’s just insane.

So, it is truly with great fear and trembling that I invite you to take a listen. “Ghost In The Needle,” which is a straight down-the-middle, Americana as it can be, reflection on the music that has inspired us, the people we miss, and the spirit that guides us. “Not OK At All” is a lament. It’s a grief song. A young friend of ours, who was really more like family, was dying of cancer. I was suffering from sudden, terrifying migraines. Our kids were experiencing challenges. It was just too much.

We are releasing these songs exclusively through our Bandcamp page for now. There are a few reasons for this. One is that we would like to do more of this. I’ve got a few new songs written and others in progress, and Michelle has been writing a ton. She’s hoping to record and release more solo songs as well as songs we perform together as The Wayside. But without things like a venue, or Cornerstone, to gather around, it’s extremely difficult for us to find “our people,” and it’s been hard to motivate ourselves to get these things done. We’re really starting from scratch in many ways. We may launch a Kickstarter campaign or something like it, and we need to be able to communicate with those who are interested in our music. When people are listening on Spotify or Apple Music we have no line-of-sight to them. With Bandcamp, though, we can build our mailing list and establish or re-establish relationships with the people who are interested in our music and our stories. The second reason is that whatever money we can make from the sale of these bundles will go right back into our recording budget. And lastly, Bandcamp has some great discovery tools. We would love to have new people find us and come alongside us. So, phase one of this campaign is about finding our supporters, giving them a killer package (art by Kreg Yingst, exclusive instrumental tracks bundled with the singles, a 12-page digital book, and a longer version of the studio film) in exchange for their email address and $5 (or more if they want.) We are also making a limited-run CD single that will contain the digital booklet and video as well.

I’ve always felt weird talking about my music under the True Tunes tent. I don’t know why, exactly, but I have – and do. I think it’s because I know that most people here have come to listen to and talk about artists who are much more accomplished than I am. I feel like I am taking advantage of the platform or something. Michelle has bugged me about it for years. I just need to get over it already. So – this is me being completely transparent. Thanks for indulging me. I also continue to work with artists and labels as a consultant and have just accepted a new job as the Director of Music Industry Studies at Lipscomb University. I’ve been teaching other artists about the artist development process for years. Now I get to experience it all myself again. There’s no better way to learn about what it takes to be an artist out in this weird new world than actually to do it.

I can’t wait to hear what you think of the songs. If you love them, please spread the word. Bandcamp waives their fees on Friday, Dec 2, and every extra penny helps.

-JJT

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