Album Review – JD Graham’s “Uppers & Downers”

Singer/Songwriter (#570.15) and Red Dirt (#550.7) on the Country DDS. AI = “Clean”

Sharing dispatches from the seedy and downtrodden side of life that ultimately blossoms into inspiring stories of redemption and renewal, JD Graham fearlessly mines the very depths of emotion as he explores the most involved contours of the songwriting discipline. This is an artist who only knows how to write the most brutally honest, the most touching and unburdening songs each time pen meets paper, knowing he might fail at finding an audience for it, but is never willing to settle for anything that feels even remotely empty or inferior.

JD Graham almost didn’t make it to see the release of his latest album Uppers & Downers. A devastating car accident on February 24th landed him in an Intensive Care Unit, fighting for his life and future mobility. Luckily, he made it out alive, and after surgery, hopes for no major irreparable damage moving forward. But the US and European tour he had planned to coincide with the album has been canceled, and he considered pausing the release as well.

But Uppers & Downers is very much an album of medicine. It’s about healing and recovery, the overcoming of obstacles and adversities, and finding an inner strength to rise up and defy odds, often at the very depths of sorrow and destitution. Only fitting that JD Graham shares these stark doses of reality at a traumatic time in his own life.

The album starts off with the song “Diamond (The Stripper Song).” It’s not entirely novel in its character study of a dancing girl whose life descends into sin before trying to come clean. The difference about JD Graham’s version is it’s not a work of fiction. Like so many of his songs, it’s ripped straight from his reality and based on someone close to him. You feel this intimacy with the story in every word and line—in how carefully and passionately his songs are delivered.

Perhaps the masterpiece of the album is the second song, “Truth in Tears,” presented as a duet with Tulsa music legend John Fullbright. Every day we all engage in fake smiles and put-on pleasantries as part of routine. But tears never betray the emotions behind them. Leave it to JD Graham to express this in a way that rings so true.

Uppers & Downers was co-produced by Jason Weinheimer, and recorded with what you could consider the Tulsa Wrecking Crew of musicians, namely John Fullbright on keys, Jesse Aycock and Stephen Lee on guitars, John Rickard on pedal steel, and Paddy Ryan on drums. The music really sculpts itself around JD’s songs. It’s less interested in being expressive itself, and more focused on trying to accentuate what JD Graham is doing.

What JD does beyond pen stunning compositions is deliver them with one of the most natural and effortless vibratos you will ever encounter in music. Sweep all the other praise you can bring to bear on JD Graham aside for a second. His vocal delivery is a thing of masterful beauty. Combined with his superior songs, this is really what turns the whole listening experience sublime.

“Alter of Grief,” the tragedy of “Danielle,” the warmness of “My Old Friend,” the sorrow of “Leavin'”—there is no letup, no quarter shown to your emotional receptors on Uppers & Downers. It’s definitely more down than up. But as we all know, the greatest upper comes from downer songs. Then JD Graham deftly explores the power of words in the Chilling passages of “The Writer.” He understand the responsibility someone with a rapt audience can have, and the weight behind the words they choose.

Uppers & Downers is one of those albums that challenges the listener to lean in and listen intently. You could even say it comes across as a bit “one note” in its understated and slow nature one song after another. This dynamic is shaken up when you get to the up-tempo and rockin’ “Dead Man’s Disguise,” chased by “I Don’t Need Nothin’.” But at this point, you’re at the end of the album when these tracks could have been sequenced earlier to stir the energy.

“Nobody seems to listen ’till your dead,” Graham sings in the solemn and true track “Empty Seats.” Like so many of the top-level songwriters of our time, JD Graham has been laboring away in relative obscurity for much of his career, though in recent years the pull of his songs have been hard to overcome, and he’s been enjoying bigger and bigger draws.

How ironic is it that to took almost dying for places like Fox News, People Magazine, and Taste of Country to finally pay attention to JD Graham. It was for tragic reasons, but maybe the divinity was in the right place. Uppers & Downers is a career effort from JD Graham, revealing him as a world-class songwriter worthy of wide attention beyond any personal tragedy.

8.5/10

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