Joseph Bradshaw - Trouble Is (2022)

I am writing this in a neighborhood bar somewhere east of Little Five. Atlanta. A few celebratory drinks before I walk back to my little apartment across from the Clermont Hotel. I rented the place for the week and was gonna stay an extra night but the rates double on Sunday, so I guess I won’t. I guess I’ll go home. It’s 10:30 now, but it’s still hot outside. It feels like the summer won’t ever end. And maybe it won’t. Maybe the end is near?

The band left this morning to go back home to Florida. Andy, Dylon, Abe, Greg: The Florida Four. But that’s not a real band name now is it? Early this morning, we printed the last rough mix for the songs we recorded here. For a while, we’ve been referring to the record as Jesus Christ, Mr. Bradshaw—which is a joke that came up out of nothing and then never went away. In the end, the record might have a different name. Who knows? There’s still a bunch of work to do.

Back in February, TJ invited us to record two songs at Big Trouble. That’s how it all started. Then, this week, we recorded eight more and fixed one of the tunes from the February set. For three days, I really put the band through the paces; fifteen hour days in which I forgot to call meal breaks. But they hung in there, didn’t seem to hate me too much, and they played their hearts out. When we came together, I had a lot of songs. Some worked, others didn’t. In the end, I don’t know if we picked the right ones or not, or if we arranged them in the right ways. I guess we just tried to follow where things led us. We recorded a lot in those three days. Too much maybe. But we played with spontaneity and urgency and it all felt good. Time is a player on this record too. If you can’t hear it, maybe you can feel it.

Driving around today, the songs sounded good in the car. Rough, but good. Each one means something to me. I don’t know what others will hear when they listen, but they all mean something to me. They are the songs I wanted to make. Songs that feel good to play. They all make me feel something. They're made up of feelings and ideas and discontents. To me, they’re mostly about the failures of modern righteousness. My own righteousness. The wall building, soul destroying affectations of good people brought up in a society that, above all, rewards success and scoffs at the kind of human connections that comes from collaborating without gain. They’re about how most things come back around in big and little ways. They’re songs about living and dying and some of the ways that we search for salvation. In the end, I guess it’s like this: life is filled with heartbreak and nothing lasts forever. And somehow that’s hopeful even when it’s sad.

When I step back and look at these ideas all at once–these songs that we made during a sticky August in Atlanta, Georgia–I can see things a bit clearer. The stories. The songs. The work. The people. All of it. In the end, I guess it’s like this: life is filled with heartbreak and nothing lasts forever. And somehow that’s hopeful even when it’s sad.

JGMB, August 2021