June Star Equally Wild
Baltimore mainstay Americana band fronted by Andrew Grimm, June Star, has a new album just out, Equally Wild. This album was produced by J Robbins (Andy Bopp), mixed by J Robbins and Andrew Grimm, and mastered by Dan Coutant at Sunroom Audio. The album was recorded at Magpie Cage Studios. Grimm is a reliably great songwriter with a superlatively rustic vocal quality to match and the album is an undiscovered jewel this year. There are songs of regrets, defiance, and relationships gone sort of cruelly wrong, and with a sense of injustice, and underneath it all, hope for a fresh start; but there are also songs of losing your mother and coping with that emptiness. And all are written with poetic turns of phrase and the sorrowful realistic, air of resignation that Americana fans crave.
“Long Time Running” opens the album with a groove beat, gentle harmonica and showcasing Grimm’s golden Americana-perfect voice, in a song of remorse, mistreatment and humanity: “why don’t you come back home? I know you know the way… Tell me what you want to hear, say it slow, speak it clear. Everyone will know how I lost control.”
“Give It Some Time” is a rockin number with a pushback of defiance: “won’t you tell me where the fun went? did it slip right through your hands? she is just like me. I will tell you that I’m sorry until you’re blue in the face Add to the burdens that you carry until you’re bent out of shape.’
On “Ruins,” there’s a pretty, alluring intro, and the reflective: “How is your heaven? I’m still waiting up for you, and all I do is think, “What if I blink and break in two? I say that I have changed but that don’t explain what I’m doin here.”
Midway through the album is the appealing song “No Place To Go” and a human-to-human plea: “Let me in I’ve got no place to go… It’s getting dark It’s getting cold. Make a wish and don’t tell a soul, does your dreaming ever get old?” The pedal steel is gently melodious here and the song is another poignant listen. You can imagine driving down the cold dark road, just longing for a place to belong.
Later in the album is “The Thing It Haunts,” a darker, Western number with the chilling and foreboding: “Who will stop me? Who will know? Don’t leave here without tryin.’ Leave a mark that says you were here. The whole world will say your name. They only speak it, after you disappear.”
“One Bird” is a truly authentic song of homage to the emptiness of both being without a mother. It’s raw and it’s real: “Lift you up to the air, deliver you home from one bird to another, I like your song. To a boy without a mother, I know how it hurts from late in the night ’til you get up for work. And the rest of the world goes on with its day. To a boy without a mother, nothing’s the same.”
The album closes with the deep sigh of a family that’s lost its heart center, another song of his mother’s passing, expressed in the most painful of ways, yet ending clinging to simple comforts: “I’m looking for Christmas, on my way home I wish my mother was alive and the promise of family, true and unbroken was more than a dream in my mind. And nothing ever feels so right like sleeping in your own bed surrounded by treasures you’ve found that only you may possess, and not knowing that someday this all will end.” It’s heavy and it’s real and it’s important songwriting.
Andrew Grimm is the real deal, a poet and songwriter par excellence. The music can rock and then pull you in with acoustics and hushed sorrow and the most vulnerable of confessions. And there are bushels of pain to process. You can find the music and more information here on his BandCamp page: https://junestar.bandcamp.com/album/equally-wild
Enjoy our previous coverage here: REVIEW: June Star’s “The Late Spring” Will Stoke Your Fire for the Oncoming Winter
Musicians on the album are June Star: Andrew Grimm on vocals and guitars; David Hadley on pedal steel; Chris Iseli on bass; David Bryson on drums and percussion and Michael Zepeda on guitars. Special guest J Robbins contributed harmonies, piano, and organ. All lyrics were by Andrew Grimm. The front cover was by Enoch Leung and the back cover was done by Scott Vieth.