Album Review – Joe Stamm Band’s “Little Crosses”

Reviews 25 Comments


Country Rock (#560) on the Country DDS.

We all can recite their names forwards and backwards, and do often whenever friends, family, and co-workers ask us to recite our top recommendations from the little “independent” country scene we won’t shut up about. It’s Tyler Childers, The Turnpike Troubadours, Cody Jinks, Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, Sierra Ferrell, Charley Crockett, Charles Wesley Godwin, and a few others.

What do they have that The Joe Stamm Band lack, making them somehow secondary? The answer is nothing. There’s nothing this band gives up to the top names in independent country and Americana. The songs and songwriting, the stellar catalog of albums, and the blistering live performances, they don’t give an inch of ground up to anyone. It’s only an issue of name recognition that keeps these guys from outside of Peoria, Illinois from headlining festivals themselves.

Releasing Little Crosses in the dead of summer is smart timing for Stamm and Co. This is a summer album full of serious heartland rock, songs that stoke sentimental memories, and a little bit of recklessness to make it ripe to bark at the moon and drive too fast to, basking in the moments that warm summer evenings are most agreeable for.

The opening song “Territory Town” might as well be straight from the John Cougar Mellencamp catalog, or Springsteen’s mid-career output. Despite it’s familiar and reminiscent charm, it’s ultimately one of the lightweights in the track list if anything as Stamm does what he does best, which is strike you with observational lyricism wrapped into compelling storytelling.


It’s hard to not be riveted while Stamm sings about the ripping apart of a family in the song “Forward,” especially as he’s dropping lines like “Her little face pressed against the glass,” while the pulsating beat mimics the blood-pumping rush as life-altering moments unfold. In the title track, Joe’s account of a squirrel darting across a roadway, trying to avoid getting hit is something we’ve all witnessed, while weaving this observation into a rumination on how life can be so fleeting is the poetic gift Stamm has illustrated time and time again in his songs.

Like Charles Wesley Godwin, Joe Stamm knows how to tap into the most potent moments in life as the setting in his songs. Like Shane Smith and the Saints, he then uses swelling waves of sonic movements to enhance the experience. Godwin’s bandleader Al Torrence acting as producer brings a grand vision to these songs that utilize the greatest assets of Appalachia music, Heartland rock, and some country. But the ultimate results are all native to the Joe Stamm Band. They like to call it “Black Dirt Country Rock.”

Since the Joe Stamm Band never characterized themselves as country purists or anything other than themselves, this gives them the permission to impress more ambient intros on songs like “Cold” and “The Wind Is Up and Walking,” with the latter turning into an outright metal song by the end. Little Crosses comes with enhanced texturing throughout, but this also includes the more understated, and more country sounds of “Foldin’ Cash” about a beggar looking for reprieve, or the hearthy moments of “Home.”

Sometimes this album relies more on musical power than it does lyrical mastery to get its point across, like on the final song “Wolf Man.” Sometimes the music gets in the way of easily understanding the lyricism in a way that inadvertently diminishes the writing. But it’s still songs like “Hold On To Me” that define the experience where the story evokes the worst of times, but the best of love.

The Joe Stamm Band have been trying to make it as outsiders of the fold for a dozen years now. But as they prove once again on Little Crosses, they deserve every ounce of attention out there flowing to others, if not more. It is industry-leading songs and an industry-leading sound that has resulted in overwhelming respect from peers, and pure passion from the initiated.

8.3/10

– – – – – – – – –

Purchase from the Joe Stamm Band

© 2025 Saving Country Music

, , ,