Album Review – Joe Stamm’s “More Than Just Bones”

Country Rock (#560) and Singer/Songwriter (#570.15) on the Country DDS.

In certain connected circles, everyone knows the names of Jason Isbell, James McMurtry, or even Evan Felker, John Moreland, and Emily Scott Robinson. When the discussion turns to premier songwriters, they’re not to be left out. They might be obscure compared to more popular music performers. They might be under-valued in the grand scheme, however well-supported their music might be. But you feel confident that when the history books are written about this era in American music, those names won’t be overlooked.

For Joe Stamm, the disconnect is more pronounced. The gulf between the attention he deserves and the attention he gets is incredibly wide. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any fan base for this Midwestern country rocker. In 2025 when all Saving Country Music could muster for Stamm was runner up recognition for Album of the Year and Song of the Year, the fangs came out. Some Stamm fans still curse SCM’s name, even if it’s one of the few outlets even speaking about him. But to Stamm fans, nobody is second best to Joe. And perhaps they’re right.

Make sure to mark one of Joe Stamm’s attributes as a songwriter as “prolific.” Many have yet to wear out their copies of 2025’s Little Crosses with the Joe Stamm Band, and here he is releasing five new songs in an EP, with the tracks coming in at a premier level. You can’t help but be sucked into the mortal combat between Natives and Canadian settlers that is unleashed upon your senses in the opening song “Only The Dead.”

You don’t just sense the action in this song, it’s brought uncomfortably close to you. You can hear the musket blasts. You can smell the carnage. You can taste the fear as your silly little modern problems are trivialized. And when Joe Stamm cries out, “‘Cause it’s only the dead know the end of the war!” you feel it deep in your marrow. It’s not just the imagery he evokes through words. Stamm has a voice like a foghorn, and the music matches the song’s passion with its billowy, reverberative balladry.

Joe Stamm is joined in portions on this EP by his friend and common collaborator, Charles Wesley Godwin, along Godwin’s backing band The Allegheny High. The two wrote the song “Drive Me Around” together, which is a comparatively grounded and heartfelt track about family compared to the opening scene. Such great composition always seems to grace Joe Stamm tracks, and in this instance, it’s the choice of the tasteful banjo at the beginning, and then the way the guitar solo swells at the end to really bring the song home.

As hard as it is to write a song about dead soldiers that’s actually good, it’s double hard to write a good song about writing songs that appeals to anyone but songwriters. But leave it to Joe Stamm to do this very thing with “Sing Along.” By weaving in such beautiful imagery about a child stacking blocks and an old dog dreaming of chasing a racoon, Stamm puts you right in the room where the song was written, or the scene where it was inspired. Joe has such keen vision for songs, finding them in places many other songwriters would miss.

For the final two songs of the EP, Stamm returns to the stormy chords and moments that roil the emotions like a tempest on the sea. Stamm takes no tracks off, never sticks a song in there just because it’s there. With each song, he swings for the fences, trying to make a deep, severe emotional connection with his audience. And for many of them, he succeeds.

It’s seems like so many of these Midwestern songwriters come with that stubbon attitude that can be both frustrating, and endearing. Wherever there is a fork in the road, they take the harder path path on purpose. If something’s placed at their feet, they don’t always partake. They seem to understand that it’s in the struggle where the best songs, and the best life lessons are found. Joe Stamm casts five of these moments in the tracks of More Than Just Bones that are not to be overlooked.

8.5/10

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