Jaret Ray Reddick: Just Woke Up
Photo by Amy Barry
“Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit,” I loudly exclaimed as I scrolled through the available reviews and found my childhood hero, Jaret Ray Reddick, on the list. You may know Reddick from the popular band Bowling for Soup, or you may recognize his voice from the theme song of the hit TV show Phineas and Ferb, or maybe you know him as the voice of our favorite pizza-loving mouse, Chuck E. Cheese. When I was a young boy, my family had dinner with a colleague of my father’s and he gave me everything in his iTunes library. I brought my 500 GB external hard drive and filled it with everything I possibly could and out of it all my absolute favorite record was Bowling for Soup‘s A Hangover You Don’t Deserve. Imagine my excitement, when I look at the tracklist and behold! A song from my favorite album, Country Fried. Reddick told me he was trying to bridge the gap between country and punk, saying that the two genres have more in common than folks think. There was always a part in the OG version of “Ohio” that had a little country acoustic guitar break and I always imagined what this song would sound like if it were a pure country tune. And now my imagination has manifested into reality. We started our phone interview with some jokes and reminiscence of Hangover, and even talked about how punk rock George Strait is for never writing bridges.
Jaret Ray Reddick’s Just Woke Up is a pot full of country gold. The first track kicks off with a driving Texas country tune called “Way More Country.” “I’ve got about 110 tattoos, but I’m way more country than you,” Reddick boasts. He rhymes Tesla with wrestler and Uncle Kracker “fucking loves it.” This one is relatable to all small-town-truck-drivin’ country boys and girls and is sure to put you in a good mood especially when ol’ Kracker takes a crack at a verse himself. It’s always good to hear familiar voices together and this one sure is special. “You can go to the country bars, or whatever and put on your shirt and boots, or whatever, but I'm way more country than you’ll ever be.” Reddick tells me, after explaining his first car was a ‘69 Ford Ranger, that it spent more time on the side of the road than it did between the mayo and the mustard (little Jesse Daniel reference for y’all).
“There’s people that put positivity into the world and you just think about how you feel every time you’re with them,” Reddick says about his second song on the record, “One of the Good Ones.” A beautiful song that captures the feeling perfectly about being around good people that love 1,000 times more than they hate. I appreciate this song a lot for its simple but bold meaning and I know you will too.
It wouldn’t be a Texas Country Record without “Songs about Texas,” the driving Texas song about how everyone has a song about Texas. One of Reddick’s favorite lines from this song was “Pat Green’s got this one I stole this title from.” He wanted to celebrate the state of Texas and how you can love Texas as much as you love another person. This song is brilliant and you’ll love all of the Texas references within it.
We talked a little bit about co-writing songs as well, since Reddick co-wrote the entire record with Zac Maloy. It used to be that you had to get in a room and give each other ideas, but during quarantine things changed a lot. So, Reddick and Maloy wrote this whole record over a course of three or four weeks via text message. They had written the song “Ohio” some years back, so it made sense to include it on the record and then throughout random hours, day and night, over those weeks, the two texted each other lyrics for the entire record. “It’s really crazy how organic it came from. It’s almost like this thing wrote itself. It was just time for it to happen.”
One of my personal favorites from this album is “My Truck Up and Left Me,” which is a witty song about various ways a man could lose his beloved pickup, from the bank repossessions, young punk thieves, or a young’n coming of age and needing dad’s ol’ reliable. This is a heartwarming instant classic country song that will surely imprint upon your brain. I’m absolutely blown away that no one has ever thought of this before and it’s about time someone had.
One other track I’ll highlight is the song ”Natalie.” Which is a very special song to Reddick and the only cover on the record. Reddick never knew who his biological father was until about 5 years ago when he met his biological sisters. This is what the song “Royal Family” is partially about. His biological father was named Charlie Jones and he was a musician. He wrote and recorded this song when he was 19 years old in 1959. So after Reddick’s sisters had sent him the song he decided he had to cover it, and it is a really special thing for “little brother” to be doing one of dad’s songs. He even had his favorite guitar player, Stephen Egerton, play on it; and get this, his wife’s name is Natalie. Funny how the Universe puts things like that together sometimes.
Go buy this record. You’ll love all the wonderful features from Uncle Kracker, Cody Canada, Frank Turner, and of course Stephen Egerton. Every track on this album is delightful and you will find yourself entranced in a wonderful listening experience. Just Woke Up is also available everywhere you stream.
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