Nashville (US) based artist, J. Dewveall, released his latest single, Trouble & Truth, on July 1 2022 and honestly…. we can’t stop listening to it here at the Send Me Your Ears studio.
What a glorious, smooth gospel blues track this is. A real find. Harking back to old style blues but with a crystal clear sound, Trouble & Truth is a song that wrestles with the grey areas in life. The places that aren’t straightforward black and white.
Whilst Trouble & Truth is a melancholy song, it thoroughly lifted our team. With some spectacular and subtle incidental guitar fills and a simple melody, this song just washes over you.
Trouble & Truth develops perfectly; with drums and hammond coming in at around 2 minutes and some lovely stops and change of pace at around 3 minutes this song just builds and builds.
As it progresses, so does J. Dewveall’s vocal prowess. Superbly clear vocals throughout, that are impassioned and emotional – with some fragility at the start, but with enormous grit and power by the end. One of our team had visible goosebumps! Visible!!
Feeling in places a little like something that might have been heard on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, and in other sections reminding us of that glorious Notting Hillbillies album, Missing…presumed having a good time, this is a song which will stay with us.
From a production perspective, a boost around 140Hz would add to the warmth and thickness in the bottom end. A small cut around 600-700Hz would balance out the track a little and allow the vocalist to really show off the power in the voice. A small but wide boost centred around 7kHz would add to the presence and brightness overall and a small boost in the top octave would give it a real shine. As always, none of these ideas would distract from an already excellent song, quality production and powerful performance.
J. Dewveall’s single, Trouble & Truth, is one of our favourites in a while. This is a song to sip whiskey to late into the night and put the world to rights with your nearest and dearest! Fantastic quality music.