The songs cover a year of family breakup and job loss. Oh, and that suicidal horse, who smashed into one window of his truck while Jesse flew out the other. Through it all, Jesse kept writing, turning tragedy into triumph as a tunesmith.
And that four-year-old daughter? “I was clueless,” he laughs. “But parenting is so reflexive. I didn’t even bat any eye…ya gotta get up pretty early in the morning to get one past me, but you gotta get up real early in the morning to get a four-year-old girl ready for pre-school.”
Jesse channeled every minute of free time crafting the songs on this album. “They had to stay together to capture the roller coaster ride that my heart and soul had been on this past year. A lot of the time I wanted to holler at somebody to stop the ride and let me off, but, looking back, I would do it all again….you know, stand in line and pay the price to get on the ride again.” He laughs and adds, “Just not anytime in the near future.”
“Nowadays, I don’t get hollered at when I write for hours at a time, and pick up a new instrument, flogging it into a groove. So yeah, my picking and writing are better than ever.”
The album initially was entitled Horses and Divorces (Don’t Miss The Fall). Songs range from recklessness to recovery. Broken homes. Broken hearts. But unbroken promises.
“These may or may not become hit songs,” Jesse says. “But these stories hit me right between the eyes.”