Jeff Caudill “Try To Be Here” (Independent, 2008)

For his family.

This guy has missed his vocation. He should be out selling his songs to the rock bands of the world. Extreme, Nickelback, John Cougar and Bon Jovi would lap up ‘Remember the Time’, ‘Stay Home’, ‘Spend’, ‘Transition City’ and ‘Reminder’. The royalties would buy him a couple of houses in Malibu and a few sports cars when they hit the top of the rock charts. They’re sure fire anthems.

This guy is rock’n’roll through and through. His songs simply jump out of the speakers and unlike the multitude of middling bands that grace the charts he’s got what it takes.

Fiercely independent, Caudhill was in punk-pop band Gameface in the early 90’s and his ability to come up with a memorable hook and melody has continued with this, his third (if you count the seven track album ‘The Way Back’ he released in 2002) solo album. Caudill sings about past glories, childhood memories, his daughter, the future and being comfortable in his own skin.

The aforementioned ‘Stay Home’ indicates how he can’t imagine life without his daughter and states “But nobody sleeps in the afternoon, a little girl without shoes, dancing to daddy’s guitar on the living room floor, and I don’t know what I did before her”. ‘Reminder’ brings in some great pedal steel and brings a semblance of a slight country feel on what is primarily a rocky Americana album. ‘I Was The Lead Singer’ is revisited from his 2007 EP release with Drive Til Morning. ‘Song About A Pisces’ would slip easily into The Replacements or The Lemonheads song list with no problem. But it’s not all rock stuff, ‘All Things New’ is a keyboard led ballad which rounds the album off nicely and ‘Dreaming in Realtime’ is just him with acoustic and electric guitar and a piano.

Caudill deserves to be more widely heard, but then that would mean him giving up his independence and I don’t think he’d do that without a fight. As he says “I don’t need to write a hit, but I want someone to sing along with it”. And he does that in spades on ‘Try To Be Here’.

Date review added:  Friday, January 02, 2009
Reviewer:  Phil Edwards
Reviewers Rating:
Related web link:  Jeff Caudill website