J.R. Carroll has 0 hobby in being hailed as nation tune’s subsequent savior. Even if his debut album, Darkish Cloud, launched on Friday after 5 years of singles and brief EPs, would possibly land him there in opposition to his will.
“I’m most effective doing issues that I actually need to do,” Carroll tells Rolling Stone. “I’m now not actively seeking to marketplace myself to a much broader target market. I’m glad the place I’m at. I’m revered through the individuals who I sought after to be revered through after I began this. If it grows, that’s nice, and I will be able to be a just right steward of no matter turns into of that, however I have already got a task that helps to keep me busy all yr.”
That individual task for Carroll is enjoying keyboard within the band fronted through his long-time pal — and fellow Oologah, Oklahoma, local — Zach Bryan.
Over the last 18 months, when now not traveling with Bryan, Carroll pieced in combination Darkish Cloud at Teegarden Studios in Tulsa, recording 9 authentic songs and a gospel hymn — “Within the Lawn,” a nod to Carroll’s upbringing because the son of a Pentecostal preacher — to spherical out the report.
The result’s a stripped-down nation album full of ultra-personal lyrics that the 25-year-old Carroll has been writing for 6 years, since he traded within the spiritual lifetime of his upbringing for the bars, arenas, and stadiums that he performs in now.
“I spent the ultimate yr and a part recording this album in breaks from traveling when my psychological well being allowed me to if truth be told go away the sofa,” he says. “I wrote the primary track at the report when I used to be 21, simply beginning to play bars and get my center damaged. And I wrote the ultimate authentic track at the album the day earlier than I proposed to my spouse.
“I made it as one of those debrief to the arena on how my existence has been since I began touring round, and what I’ve been going thru and experiencing,” he continues. “I attempt to display the transition from considering of house as a spot to considering of house as an individual — and the adventure it took me to get there.”
That mindset shines thru on “Fatherland Hero,” already launched as a unmarried. The steel-heavy honky-tonk sound and two-four beat supplies the canvas for Carroll to color an image of a lonely night time at house, culminating within the refrain of: “I don’t want any sympathy/I don’t need the rest however wine/She could also be long gone, however she received’t put out of your mind me/as a result of heroes don’t die/Lord is aware of I’ve attempted, however love simply received’t let me.”
Carroll has been married to his spouse, Felicia, for just a little greater than a yr, and the 2 have a space in Tulsa and a Pug named Bella. Felicia and Bella supply a convenience zone for the reclusive Carroll; he wrote “Fatherland Hero” when Felicia needed to shuttle for paintings.
“I used to be the only left on my own at house for a transformation,” he says. “I thought of going out to the Iron Horse in Oologah, but it surely was once a Wednesday, and I thought of how miserable that will be to go back from enjoying stadiums simply to head sit down in an empty bar and pass over my spouse. So, I made up a tale that kinda jogged my memory of that imaginative and prescient I noticed in my head.”
The whole lot of the album is a self-exploration for Carroll. It’s glaring in “Disgrace” and “How one can Be Ok,” each songs in a position to tying a listener’s center into knots, now not such a lot with ache however with any such anxiousness and rigidity {that a} reluctant highway warrior can by no means actually shake.
Carroll were given his get started in Oklahoma’s Crimson Dust scene. His first-ever display was once a bar gig with fellow Oklahoman Wyatt Flores when neither artist had made a reputation for themselves (or joined a band with person who had). Till 2022, when Bryan’s profession took off and he known as Carroll and requested him to enroll in his traveling band, Carroll was once at the identical emo-country trail as Flores, writing and enjoying songs to stay his personal angst and insecurities at bay. He nonetheless writes for the ones causes, however a J.R. Carroll solo live performance is a unprecedented incidence. He has performed a couple of giant gala’s — the Windy Town Smokeout in 2023 and the newest Two-Step Inn — and he headlined a four-band New 12 months’s Eve invoice that incorporated Kaitlin Butts and Nolan Taylor a yr in the past at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa. Carroll additionally stuffed in as Bryan’s opener for 2 nights ultimate month in Sacramento when Levi Turner needed to pass over the displays for the start of his kid. Carroll went viral for overlaying Taylor Swift’s “Imply” on the displays.
However the ones are exceptions to his homebody way of life, and he does now not see that converting — a lot.
He plans to excursion in improve of Darkish Cloud within the spring when Bryan’s excursion concludes, and he’ll go back to Cain’s on Dec. 30 to open a sold-out display for Flores. But if Carroll isn’t traveling with Bryan, he’d quite keep house than pressure a gig for himself.
“I don’t seek it out,” he says. “I realize it’s roughly silly as it’s my complete task, however I don’t actually love traveling. I’m this type of homebody, and now I’m married — and I’ve a spouse who I actually love, and actually love being with. So it’s even more difficult to get me out the door.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and creator whose 3rd e book, Crimson Dust Unplugged, is about for unlock on December 13, 2024, by way of Again Front room Publishing, and to be had for pre-order.
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