“Go ahead. Open it up. It’s a gift…”, suggests Jerry Joseph slyly in the opening seconds of new song “South of South”. Joseph, 61 currently resides in Portland, OR, a home base from which one can just as easily find him playing down the street as they could teaching guitar lessons to children in Afghanistan. Jerry is a lifelong juvenile delinquent specializing in all the things you’re not supposed to be doing and writing songs about it all the way.
2020’s The Beautiful Madness found Jerry backed by “The Stiff Boys” aka The Drive-By Truckers. This is not a stretch given the number of Athens, GA connections the songwriters and friends have shared over many years. Jerry’s band The Jackmormon’s has boasted members, touring or on album of Vic Chestnut, ex-DBT John Neff and departed Widespread Panic guitarist Michael Houser. And so, after a successful tour of Europe together, that was canceled and rebooked three times over lockdown, it seemed like a fitting time to examine pieces of the madness left in the box.
DBT bassist Matt Patton owned the studio, Dial Back Sound where all of the tracks for Madness were recorded. The digging began there. There were tracks for entire songs, the Zeppelin-esque “The Mountain”, the somber “Quiet” and a bit on the nose rocker “South of South”. In the pile of demo material escapee “Sometimes A Great Notion” and title track “Tick” were discovered.
The startling demo versions were made by Jackmormon Stephen Drizos at his home studio dubbed The Panther, with both Jerry and Madness producer Patterson Hood performing. The beautiful thing about Jerry here is that he doesn’t seem to have a demo mode. One story about the recording of The Beautiful Madness has everyone in the room spellbound as Jerry was showing DBT and studio staff the song “Dead Confederate”. After the audition was over all anyone could feel was regret that the tape wasn’t rolling. Yet, Jerry stepped to the mic and turned in an equally if not more superb version for the record.
For Side 2 there’s a wild ride of a live performance of songs from The Beautiful Madness. The live tracks were captured by DBT producer David Barbe at the Trucker’s annual Heathen Homecoming shows in 2020. That night at The 40Watt Club in Athens, GA was the first and only full set of The Beautiful Madness material to be performed by the monster of Jerry Joseph fronting The Drive-By Truckers. With only time for a soundcheck refresher of the material the results are an over-the-top, loosey-goosey, punker’s dream.
