I used to think that writing about something I really liked was easy. That the words would flow from my typing fingers with fevered intensity brought on by the inspired enthusiasm created by the music in my ears. It would explode from my own creative brain without any blocks and the right words would never escape me! Then I met my friend Jeremy Hilliard.
Dammit, Jeremy.
You might have seen other pieces on this blog about his psychedelic jam funk band PEAK. They are favorites of mine around the Northeast jam scene and always a good time. I have also written about his other solo efforts as they appeal to the singer songwriter vibe I like most. It’s has always been the mission of this blog to share what I think is good. So share, I do! But this most recent collection of songs from Jeremy entitled Going Back to Where It All Began has me shook. Rarely am I speechless about anything. I take pride in the fact that sometimes I don’t know when to shut up. But this music is hitting me in a way that has knocked me on my ass and I am still sitting here wondering what happened. I have been sitting on this record for a minute, listening often and working on this review in my head but I have just not been able to get my fingers to do that whole typing out thoughts thing and I thought it was just the stress of the week or the election or the drastically weird climate of this nation right now, but I think it’s more than that. Or maybe it’s all of that?
This album is outstanding.
I make no mystery of my love for folk music, singer songwriter prose and Americana vibe in general. I was raised on a steady diet of all of it and it’s shaped my taste, as much as people have been working to really revive that vibe the last decade or so, it’s been a while since I heard music that was truly encapsulating of the mood of the world right now. The confusion, the pensive energy, but the desire not to be swallowed by it all because the world spins madly on. There is a moodiness to Jeremy’s writing that permeates this album, but it’s not a hopelessness. It’s an attitude of trying to define an emotion with sound and every song as this record progresses has more of that story to tell. A story about longing, then about remembrance. A story about the past, and then about the future.
A story.
The title track, Going Back to Where it All Began has a truly lovely but chugging sense of purpose. It’s telling a tale through the tempo and vocal but at the same time remains a blank page that you can fill with your own story. The guitar playing is reminiscent of classic folk tellers and the song moves like a train car through the countryside and if you close your eyes, you can drop yourself right on that train. The song itself tells of memories and reminiscing, something so relatable.
The second track that really stuck me was coincidently the second track on the album, Before Your Love. There is an ethereal quality to the construction of this song and I found it to be something easy to fall into and drift away. That could be a combination of Jeremy’s lofty guitar work and the dreamy song itself or just the melancholy mood of the whole package and it’s storytelling with layers of vocals of sound. It’s spiritual and lovely.
The album is full of familiar themes but I love the fact that nothing is defined too much for you so that you can still find yourself within it. I love the warmth of the song To Luna. The words resonate in such a way that you hear your own story in it. “It’s only love changing shape”.
The last track on the album, Sweet Kathleen, was written for his friend who passed in 2023. This song is a whole vibe and if there was ever a tribute to be written, that is exactly how it should be. It’s a steady but gentle, trucking, danceable song with such a freedom air to it. It’s a smile in your ears. I love that.
Jeremy also brings back the gorgeous backup vocals of his lovely wife Bethany Hilliard, as well as bass work from PEAK’s own Josh T. Carter, drums by Brendan Hefty, and key work by Marshall Norton. In his own words, Jeremy says, “I’m not great at having a “story” around and album. I live and write!” His record Trouble for Another Day was put out September 2023. It was the first official solo album but hardly the end of that journey. Jeremy went on to write another 30 songs over the next eight months. After keeping two for PEAK, this album was borne from what remained.
“I believe the album has some recurring themes and some kind of through-line”, Jeremy says, “but I try not to think about that too much and just work intuitively.”
The tracks Deep Blue Me and Sailor’s Warning will be being released as singles, so keep your ears open for that. As always, I am over here pushing the hope that there will be some live shows with these songs someday. In the meantime, you can find Going Back to Where It All Began in all the best places for new music –