JD Clayton: Long Way From Home
Photo by Sean O’Halloran
Without pomp, circumstance, glitz or glamor. Just honest, raw, heartfelt country music from a troubadour livin’ the dream. JD Clayton will be releasing his first full album, Long Way From Home, on January 27th.
His musical journey began in Fort Smith, Arkansas, a town known for its true grit, resting on the banks of the Arkansas river and peering over into the farmlands of eastern Oklahoma. A place where the new south meets the old west. Clayton’s father worked in real estate before becoming a pastor when the oldest of his three children, JD, was starting high school. Clayton was already well-indoctrinated into music by then. His grandfather played banjo in a bluegrass band and taught Clayton some rudimentary chords; his father could pick a few chords too. “He would sit there trying to learn Jack Johnson songs from a guitar tab book while “In Between Dreams” played from a junky CD/Cassette player.” Clayton’s dad gave him a guitar when he was eight years old, though it would be a few years before it took.
At the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, he met a dorm mate in his Music Appreciation class, and the two began writing songs together, forming a band called Small Town Symphony. The group built a following, but Clayton had other plans.
“I guess I realized during my sophomore year that nothing was going to happen until I started to record music correctly,” he says. Nashville seemed the best place to do that, especially since he had a childhood friend living there and working in the publishing industry, building tracks for artists. Clayton would leave Fort Smith in the wee hours each Friday, get to Nashville early afternoon, record demos and then come back home on Monday morning. Nothing panned out, but it taught Clayton a lot. During his senior year of college Clayton found, via Instagram, producer Thomas Dulin. The two first met shortly after Clayton graduated and went on to collaborate on his 2018 Debut EP, Smoke Out the Fire.
Jumping forward to today, Clayton co-produced Long Way From Home with Dulin at his studio, The Planetarium, near Nashville’s Berry Hill neighborhood. The 10 tracks reflect the immediate, live-in-the-room approach that marked Clayton’s favorite music. Long Way From Home was mixed by Craig Alvin (Kacey Musgraves, Little Big Town, Hanson) at Cypress Moon studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and mastered by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound.
Interestingly, the album opens with “Hello, Good Mornin’” a short intro piece with birds chirping and acoustic guitar. Not the usual face-grabbing, attention-getter most albums open with. This is just Clayton waking up and greeting the day as an old familiar friend.
This song quickly transitions into a cadence-like foot stomp of “American Millionaire;” one of two songs to be released as singles from this album. An optimistic look at the daily and nightly grind for a working musician. Driving miles and miles, staying up late performing. Wash, rinse, repeat. All the while, keeping his eye on the ball and keeping the dream alive.
“Long Way From Home” is the other single to be released and the title track. This one is, in my opinion, the standout song of the whole album. The song has got a great feel. It's a letter to his mother letting her know that he is doing OK, but that he misses her. The song has some great and soulful slide guitar work coupled with heartfelt lyrics.
“Heartaches After Heartbreak” a southern rock style of love lost. The song opens with,
Woman, you left blood stains on my old tee shirt that never seem to wash away
While the song has him lamenting the one who got away, it's not a slow moping song. He is in the bar drinking his feelings away and getting numb. Paradoxically, he knew he could never really hold on to her yet he still regrets not trying harder.
The album has one well performed classic cover, “Midnight Special,” by CCR (and no, not Cross Canadian Ragweed). JD did not stray from the original version. In my mind, he performed it almost religiously to the original recording. My ONLY critique on this is that when I find a new artist, I like to see what they do with a classic, how they stylize it and how they make the song their own. I want to hear the artist’s take on the classic. A recent example of this would be Jason Boland covering Bob Childer’s “Restless Spirits” or the best example of this is Chris Stapleton’s take on Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove’s song “Tennessee Whiskey,” originally performed by David Allan Coe. In both cases, the results were amazing recordings when the artists decided to put their own stamp on these songs.
If after listening to “Different Kind of Simple Life” you think to yourself that this song reeks of desperation, it's because it does. While many these days try to idealize and romanticize small town life they, in doing so, ignore the downside to it as well. JD, in this piece, looks at life from the perspective of a young person of average means who wants more out of their life than to be born, live and then die within a 20 square mile radius. The subject is someone who is desperately trying to escape. They don’t want to end up like their parents. They want to find something bigger/better. JD eloquently illustrates this with the lines of the chorus,
Wind down the tore up road / And make your own way to freedom
‘Cause no one’s gonna pull your boots up for ya
And fly with both your arms out wide / Through that sweet by and by
And don’t look back / ‘Cause we’ll all be here when you get home
Long Way From Home has 10 solid tracks (nine originals and one cover) that will hook the listener from the first note to the last with solid lyrics, musical composition and all the feels you could ever want. JD has written and recorded this album the same way he has been writing songs & performing for years, simply and from the heart. All told, this is a solid first full album that is worth checking out.
Find out more about JD Clayton below:
