The Official Jeb Loy Nichols Website

EASY NOW

(Ryko : 2002)

Produced by Jeb and cohorts / band members WAYNE NUNES and EWAN PEARSON. In Europe and the UK, single "They Don't Know" was also released.

Great music has a sense of place. Jeb Loy Nichols' music has a sense of the whole world. Kentucky. Kingston. exas. Mississippi. London. Greenwich Village. They're all part of the landscape on EASY NOW, Nichols' third album and second Rykodisc release. As a teenage record-buyer in Missouri, Jeb never could pick a favorite between Al Green, Merle Haggard or Jimmy Cliff. As a grown-up singer-songwriter in Wales, he doesn't have to.

EASY NOW is simultaneously smooth, funky and down-home rootsy, 13 love songs and life sketches of uncommon grace and sweetness. His music is neither neo nor retro, and the membrane separating gospel, bluegrass, reggae and R&B is bubble-thin.

Jeb's song-by-song notes on EASY NOW :

LETTER TO AN ANGEL

An old song, one I wrote years ago. We tried to do it on Lovers Knot but missed the mark. I wrote it when my grandmother died and I always worried that it might cross over into some kind of maudlin, self-pitying thing, but this time I think we hit it just right. It feels like a hymn to me, like a bluegrass song.

BETTER THAN BEAUTIFUL

This is one I wrote quickly, after we recorded the last album but before it was released. It was a farewell to London and a thank you to Lorraine. One of my favorite albums is a record called Home Made Ice Cream by Tony Joe White, and it, more than anything else, pointed the direction for Easy Now. I wanted a back porch folky thing, real simple and real soulfull. Stripped down and easy. Better Than Beautiful was the first song we recorded and it came quickly. I ran though it, everyone listened, and two or three takes later it was finished. I knew then that the record was going to be fun.

THEY DON'T KNOW

This one started years ago as a Fellow Travellers tune but I never finished it. Then one day when I was writing with Wayne, he played a groove and some chords he was working on and the whole thing was finished in twenty minutes. This is one of the few songs we had to go back to when we recorded the album. We did one version that we thought was good untill Ewan convinced us it could be better. So we sat down again and got it.

WILD HONEYCOMB

One of two songs I wrote with Greg Lester. Greg's done some touring with me and he's a hell of a guitar player - he said we should get together and do some writing. He had something he'd started and I finished it. We'd planned to put strings and a Hammond and all kinds of whistles and bells on it but I liked it stripped down.

A LITTLE LOVE

This is another one that took some doing. We tried it a few different ways, different grooves, different lyrics, different harmony vocals. We came back to the simplest version. I always heard it as a Joseph Hill / Burning Spear track, just a simple straight ahead thing, a campfire song.

HEAVEN HELP ME

I based this around Just A CLoser Walk With Thee. I wanted to keep it simple and, originally, very country. But when Lorraine heard it and put some backing vocals on, it flipped around and became something else entirely. One of my favourites.

MOSTLY BITTERSWEET

I wanted the band on this one but I was shouted down. Democracy won the day. The first song I wrote when we moved to Wales.

SURE FELT GOOD TO ME

Another one I wrote with Wayne. I started to write it after seeing John Prine and Iris Dement - I was cycling home wondering how they managed to write the songs they wrote and I finished the chorus before I went to bed. The next day I went to Wayne's and we finshed the rest.

WANNA WALK (A LITTLE BIT)

This was originally the ending of a song that somewhere, somehow, lost its way. We had fun recording it though - a couple friends from America were passing through Wales and it was a good night - we kept the best bit and threw out the rest.

THE OTHER SIDE

Maybe my favorite track. I wrote the chorus in the back of Ashanti Roy's pick up in Jamaica and finished it with Greg in London. I love everything about it - Nicky's Hammond, the drum machine, my guitar, it just seemed to hit everything right. It means something to me - to have spent time with Ashanti Roy of the Congos, one of the greatest ever Jamaican vocal bands, to have started it there, in his truck, and to then to finish it at home, listening to George Jones. That's what it's all about - Kingston to Nashville.

HOLD ME STRONG

I wrote this walking around my house in Wales, looking at fields and feeling lucky, thinking of an old John Holt track. I'm real pleased with it - I think the second verse, which I changed the hour before I sang it, is as good as anything I've ever written.

NOT THE ONLY MAN

I wrote this one a good few years ago. Ewan campaigned for it to be on the record and for that I'm grateful.

NEVER COMING BACK

I wrote this in London with Charlie Dore. I started it in Greece, two years ago. I wrote a terrible version and scrapped it, forgot about it, moved on. Untill one afternoon with Charlie. We started from scratch and I'm glad I waited.