artist Jerry Leger

 JERRY LEGER & THE SITUATION - SOME FOLKS KNOW

The best part about being a music fan is experiencing the growth of an artist you really care about with each new release. When you take that often-inevitable next step from being a fan to becoming a critic, those personal relationships with a favourite artist’s songs commonly break down. Part of a critic’s job entails pinpointing flaws—moments that, for whatever reason, do not provide the same rush that made an artist interesting in the first place. In some cases these flaws painfully reveal that said artist’s true intentions were not as noble as initially thought. From there, it’s up to the marketplace to judge.

The great artists aspire first and foremost to create a lasting body of work, and after hearing Jerry Leger’s sixth release, Some Folks Know, I am convinced more than ever he is well on his way to achieving that goal. The field of singer-songwriters continues to attract scores of kids infatuated with the troubadour lifestyle. But folk and country music is in Jerry Leger’s blood. His songs have always revered the past even as they paint vivid pictures of not only his life, but more importantly, yours as a listener.

It’s redundant to say that Some Folks Know is Jerry’s best album to date. That’s as it should be. I said it about his previous full length, Traveling Grey, which in places expressed truth in ways that moved me more than anyone else had in a long time. Perhaps the last was Fred Eaglesmith, since we all three share a rural Ontario sensibility. I heard Fred once say during a solo concert in a small church auditorium that one day southern Ontario songwriters will be regarded in the same way Texas songwriters are. I’m sure Fred would include Jerry in that group.

Another way of looking at it is what Daniel Lanois once called “the tobacco belt sound,” that is, the legacy of music made by the men—men filled with conflicted emotions—to alleviate the strain of the backbreaking work in the once-expansive Ontario tobacco fields. It was the part of the province where The Band’s Rick Danko and Richard Manuel were raised, and it became their filter to interpret the mysteries of the American music they heard over the airwaves in their youth. Jerry Leger’s songs all contain that essence of rowdy Saturday nights in the tavern, followed by repentant Sunday mornings.

Even though Jerry has never sounded more assured as a writer as he does on Some Folks Know, the characters who populate the album seem dangerously unsatisfied, being pushed to the brink, if not already there. Getting to know these people led me to realize for the first time the twisted irony of Jerry dubbing his backing group “The Situation.” But multi-instrumentalist James McKie, bassist Dan Mock and drummer Kyle Sullivan have clearly matched Jerry’s development stride for stride. Whether it’s laying down an easy-swinging groove on “When The Master Calls” (on which McKie particularly shines on violin), or digging deeper on bluesier numbers like “Midnight Ride,” the group proudly wears its badges earned through countless tours and one-nighters around North America.

It’s a fiercely competitive singer-songwriter scene in Toronto, possibly more so than anywhere else in North America other than Nashville or Austin, and Jerry has applied the lessons he’s learned here toward making serious inroads south of the border where he’s forged alliances with singer/songwriter Jim Lauderdale and Nashville’s leading Americana radio station WSM. That’s on top of his strong Canadian ties to Ron Sexsmith, whose longtime guitarist Tim Bovaconti has become Jerry’s trusted producer. Sexsmith also plays piano on “Den of Sin” which opens Some Folks Know, reprising a role he filled on Jerry’s second album, Farewell Ghost Town.

Another of Jerry’s close friends is Atlantic Records recording artist Serena Ryder, and their collaboration “All Over Again” is sure to be among the first tracks on Some Folks Know that radio programmers will notice. While that song is an unflinching rumination on long-term love that swells like a classic Gram Parsons-Emmylou Harris duet (or perhaps more accurately, a Bob Dylan-Emmylou duet from Desire), the signs of Jerry’s brimming confidence and maturity don’t stop there.

I admittedly had high expectations for Some Folks Know after Jerry’s last release, a seven-song mini-LP entitled The Good Old Days Are Back In Drag. On it, he and Bovaconti experimented with a small combo sound seemingly transported directly from Memphis, circa 1955. It was an invigorating blast that fully exposed something that was always lurking just below the surface of Jerry’s songs. The ripples of that experience are evident all over Some Folks Know, most prominently on “Motel Letter Blues.”

In a more subtle way, it’s also at the heart of the album’s centerpiece, “Filthy Mouth,” a song that’s been the highlight of Jerry’s live shows for some time. Again, it’s a common small-town tale: a guy returns home after time away to discover his former love has been engaging in a lot of loose talk. By all rights the song should be a country hit, if its effect as a put-down wasn’t so devastating. On the other hand, “Don’t You Fret” and “Pass The Time” are jangly folk-rock gems that prove much Jerry has mastered the art of simplicity.

I’ve known the importance of maintaining a professional distance with artists since I began getting paid to write about music almost 20 years ago. But that’s been hard to do with Jerry Leger. His sincere dedication to his craft is something I’ve admired from the first time I spoke to him on the phone. It was under terrible circumstances; his grandfather had just died, the man who introduced him to the music of Hank Williams and Hank Snow. I didn’t want to do the interview, but Jerry insisted, saying essentially that his grandfather’s love of music had been passed on to him and it was important for people to know.

If you believe there’s any sort of legacy like that embedded within you, you’ll hear it on Some Folks Know. And you won’t forget what it means.



 Jason Schneider