Big Johnny Cash-style baritone singer with guitar, backed by a tremendously versatile, honest-to-goodness country band. Grace’s writing draws from such diverse influences as Merle Haggard, Tom Waits, the aforementioned Mr. Cash and Willie Nelson, but what sets his songs apart from rest of the country or alt-country scene is his laugh-out-loud, absurdist wit. Not only is this a great party album and a great driving album but it’s also very smart and very funny. Humor is a function of intellect anyway. Alan Young of the New York Press Read More.
The Jack Grace Band is at Rodeo Bar every Sunday this month at about 9:15, and this is a residency you should see. As the Dog Show said, Saturday nights are for amateurs, so it follows that Sundays are for the pros. Seeing the baritone country crooner/guitarist and his cohorts onstage with such a small crowd in the house was bizarre: in fact, being able to see everybody in the band without standing on tiptoe behind a bunch of people was weird. But good. This residency is born of tragedy: Grace is trying to put together a new sound without the services of his longtime lead player, lapsteel genius Drew Glackin, whose sudden, unexpected death at a young age last January caught everyone he played with (and that’s a LOT of New York musicians) completely off guard. But Grace is an excellent lead guitarist, with a terse, incisive, bluesy style, and armed with his new Telecaster, he let loose a lot of searing, even raging solos, getting the new axe to scream like his trusty old hollowbody Gibson can’t. It’s clear that this is somebody who’s still furious about losing his good friend and bandmate (Glackin had a rare thyroid condition that, if he’d had health insurance, would almost surely have been diagnosed long before it killed him). Although the anger doesn’t make it into Grace’s voice: his smooth, soulful delivery was as sly as ever, as he and the band kicked off the set with a new song, the swinging drunk-driving anthem "The Worst Truck Driver in the World", a dead ringer for Junior Brown at his most entertaining. Read More.
"...fucking splendid." Jessica
Adler, Village Voice
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