Justin Wells - Dawn In The Distance
A couple weeks back, I got to roam around Central California for a few days with Matt Woods playing shows, drinking just the little tiniest bit of bourbon and generally testing the patience and devotion of my longsuffering spouse. I remember a surprising amount of that long weekend, but one thing that absolutely made the shortlist was my introduction to Justin Wells’ new solo record, Dawn in the Distance.
Now, I’ve been more or less aware of Wells for a few years- Fifth on the Floor is lodged there somewhere in my Southern Rock / Alt Country consciousness, and the Lexington, Kentucky band’s former frontman sticks out in the memory pretty easily. His 6’7” frame gets almost physically jammed in your brain once you’ve seen a pic or two- the guy looks like he should be the extra on Vikings who’s always decapitating hapless Britons in the background during the battle scenes. Rather than hit up the History Channel for a job after the demise of Fifth, however, Wells decided to put out a solo record (released this past August) and praise Odin he did.
Sunday night, Woods and I do nearly the whole drive back from the gig without any words save those belonging to the lyrically searing Justin Wells. Matt skips around the record picking his favorites, so my first introduction is “Three Quarters Gone,” a song packed with standout lines like the chorus “It’s good ‘til it’s over / it’s a shame that it’s over so soon” and “try as I can to make right and understand / I just need more time.” The oncoming cars flee past, everyone going somewhere in a hurry, packed into little deathtrap steel cages just like us, traveling impossibly fast toward some ever-disappearing future out there past the cold spray of the hi-beams: the song just feels true.
As if in response to this temporal anxiety, Matt skips back a few tracks even before the last lonely note of the steel fades, and we’re on to “The Dogs,” a growling, upbeat cut he claims Justin wrote “for road dogs like us.” Being included in this category even for a moment makes me feel pretty great, but I’m simultaneously wondering how much hell I’m gonna catch at home for this five show run even though it’s largely centered around the county in which I live… I push the weariness and guilt out of the way and focus. “Our souls are a little older / but you can’t tell we learned a thing” sits just about right driving home from yet another a gig with nothing but bottle caps in our pockets and “we’re the last one to know it’s over and the first one to have to beg / we’re the dog that crawled for miles on broken legs / we’re the dregs…” Well, you don't have to have lived on the road to know that shit’s about as real as it gets. We sit in the driveway with the car off and finish the song, the post-midnight chill creeping through the window glass.
The listening session resumes in my living room over a handle of bourbon I used to have. Song after song, deep into the early hours, “Dawn in the Distance” keeps my attention; heartache flows in spades, of course, (especially in his wonderfully devastating version of Dire Straits’ “So Far Away”) but there’s hope too; this is what makes Wells a great country artist- he eschews the temptation to only see the dark- he understands that you can't sense the rose of sunrise without standing in the 5am void, still awake, still hammered.
Wells’ record will appeal to fans of good country music across sub-genres. It would be hard to miss the similarities his voice immediately holds to his contemporary and fellow legit twang-slinger Sturgill Simpson (they both have a tenor that evokes, to the synesthesia-ridden, a nice honey-maple) but Wells also has some edge to his pipes when pushed- he still grabs a solid helping of gritty, outlaw tone that hearkens back to his Fifth on the Floor days when need be. If Simpson’s croon comes across a little like it was born in a laboratory, Wells’ vocal style was lovingly conceived in a hatchback at a truckstop. The album’s production, too, is nicely balanced between sweet and brooding, with pleasing acoustic picking styles layered into a sometimes roiling sea of pedal steel and lush, tremolo-heavy telecaster; the sounds follow me into sleep when it finally comes and I dream I’m curled up in my guitar case, which is weirdly comfortable.
Far too early the next morning, I’m up to my arms in whatever evil shit has clogged the kitchen sink P-trap while the kids do their best to make my Jim Beam-aching brain actually explode. I’m reminded that these days my musician self fights to survive (and today that feels quite literal) between day jobs and dad duty. But it’s ok. I’ve got the last song from Dawn in the Distance stuck in my head. It’s called “Little Darlings” and I’m assuming it was written for Wells’ twin girls, who are about the age of my youngest boy. “And I will quickly go / like a Carolina snow / just to be there just to know / you are mine,” Wells sings, with a tenderness unmatched elsewhere on the LP. Indeed, his new record has something for all of us, road dogs and dads, career musicians and musicians with careers. Go pick it up and give it a spin. Maybe if you’re lucky Matt Woods will show up, get you drunk as fuck and regale you with Justin Wells tour tales- when he wakes up I’ll send him your way.
By Jon Bartel ( The Creston Line / American Dirt)