Jake Owen: Middle Age Savvy
Hometown country star Jake Owen's new album – "Dreams to Dream" – should be listened to with the lights dimmed, the phone silenced and a glass of wine within sipping distance. The lyrics roll out like pages of a good book and ponder such weighty subjects as lost or damaged love, bad choices, brave attempts at mending, the perils of the road and the solace of home and music.
Clearly Owen has come a long way from such early party hits as “Barefoot Blue Jean Night” and “Beachin'.” That's hardly a surprise considering he recently turned 44, an age at which one is generally more focused on finding life's meaning than on racking up more career points.
Indeed, one of the more telling songs on the album is Owen's cover of the 1977 Jerry Lee Lewis hit, “Middle Age Crazy,” with its refrain of “today he's 40 years old, going on 20,” and which describes (and dissects) a guy who's swapped his “usual gray business suit” for “jeans and high boots” and is now tooling around town in a “new Porsche car [with] a young thing beside him.” Owen doesn't appear to be presenting this tale as autobiographical but rather as a note-to-self about the folly of pursuing eternal youth.
Of the 13 songs here, Owen co-wrote three, relying for the remainder on such stellar composers as Hank Williams Jr., Dean Dillon, Bob DiPiero, Scotty Emerick, Jamey Johnson, Sonny Throckmorton and fellow Kingston Springsteen, Paul Overstreet. Owen also co-produced the project with fellow songwriter Kendell Marvel and Shooter Jennings at Jennings' studio in California.
Unlike most albums, in which one can always find a clinker or two, all the songs in “Dreams to Dream” are weight-bearing and thought-provoking. And some rise to the level of poetry. Take, for instance, these opening lines from “The Jukebox Knows": “Broken plates and drywall scars/How'd we get to where we are/Something's wrong and that ain't nothing new.” Was there ever a more succinct summary of a contentious, crumbling relationship? Grand Ole Opry star Jamey Johnson co-wrote this one and provides the between-verses recitation.
Or consider this weary cry from Troy Jones' “Wouldn't Be Gone”: “Today is one of those days I wish I worked in a hardware store/Think I'd be ok not playing music on the road no more.” Owen previously told the Gazette that "Wouldn't Be Gone" was inspired by his ambition to open a new restaurant in downtown Kingston Springs. This treadmill way of life pops up again in “Wrinkle in the Road” – "An old map on the dashboard wadded up and torn just like my soul/This old town I'm leaving now is just another wrinkle in the road.”
But there are songs of good cheer as well. “Them Old Love Songs,” originally recorded by Waylon Jennings (Shooter's dad) and on which local country singer Savannah Conley provides harmony vocals, rings with the hope of finding a “true, fine woman.” Another promises a “Long Time Lovin' You.” And of course there's the defiance and optimism of the title cut that Owen co-wrote: “I ain't mad, I ain't bitter/you just ain't seen the last of me/I've been down, but I ain't no quitter/'bout to get back up on my feet/Yeah, 'cause I got dreams to dream.”
"Sometimes you need to get outside what's comfortable, what people think you are, or think you should be, and take a risk," Owen said when his album came out on Nov. 7. "I've just become a guy that wants to sing songs for people that have also matured with me in my life."
Owen has a mini documentary out on the making of “Dreams to Dream” that shows him both in the studio and ambling around Kingston Springs, his adopted hometown where he's solidly set down roots. The Kingston Springs/Pegram axis is now the lair of such other music celebs as Thomas Rhett, Morgan Wallen, hit songwriter Wood Newton as well as the aforesaid Paul Overstreet. Owen's guitarist is Cole Bruce, co-owner of Kingston Springs' Skyking Pizza. You can't get more homier than that.
