Eric Schmitt - Wait for the Night (2025)

Eric Schmitt’s interest in music was sparked at a young age and consolidated through diverse influences. However, it wasn’t until years later that he began to craft songs that integrated his musical and lyrical skills. In the mid-2000s, Eric Schmitt played for the Louisiana roots band Flatbed Honeymoon, with whom he recorded two studio albums, before embarking on his solo career. His latest release, ‘Wait for the Night’ is his fourth solo LP, for which he has written all eleven songs. Additionally, Schmitt sings, plays guitar, piano, harmonica and lap steel, so you won’t be surprised to find his name on the album cover.

‘Wait for the Night’ is grounded in Schmitt’s immediate reality. These are accounts of everyday people, neighbours, relatives, friends, lovers, and the rarely sung-about mundane facet that many artists try to hide or simply ignore. Here, special attention is paid to time spent in bars and staying up late into the night, people stuck in dead-end jobs or imperfect relationships, and the hard times that come from money troubles, but also to lifelong friends, a quiet pride in one’s origins and the sometimes-brutal beauty of the natural world. Liquor might help to kill time and forget your troubles, but so does closely observing all those seemingly trivial details around you and the timeless joys to be found in nature. Some particularly representative lyrics can be found in ‘Midnight Song’:

“You can’t read it in a magazine
We ain’t living on the silver screen
And the cars still running on gasoline
And I sold my wedding ring”

This is the kind of world evoked throughout. The songs are peppered with hints at personal anecdotes, though you’d be wrong to think fiction doesn’t play a big part in ‘Wait for the Night’. Distinct narrators take over on each track, and shouldn’t be confused with Schmitt himself, a gifted storyteller who shifts between perspectives to create a rich tapestry of ordinary life. Schmitt, who is also an English teacher, makes good use of literary devices, employing the grammatical person befitting each story (pay attention to the differences between ‘BR Blues’, ‘One of These Days’ or ‘Fools Parade’), diving into a stream-of-consciousness technique (in ‘Buckets’), and generally enhancing his lyrics with literary ornaments that rarely feel contrived.

‘Wait for the Night’ also benefits from the talent of its collaborators. The album was produced and recorded by Clay Parker, with contributions from a talented group of musicians who bring out the best in Schmitt’s compositions. The fact it was recorded on tape, with a greater emphasis on feeling than production techniques, adds to an authenticity also enhanced by the lyrics’ portrayal of gritty quotidian life. A final mention is owed to Jodi James’ beautiful backing vocals, which perfectly complement Schmitt’s sound.