Brad Colerick's Hollywood firm DeepMix is a "music supervision" company, which is to say a jingle house, producing music for commercials, from writing to recording. Nineteen years ago, back home in Nebraska, he made a solo album, and now he's gotten around to making another one. Colerick takes his influences from such '70s singer/songwriters as
James Taylor and
John Denver, performers who combined folk and country music as a vehicle for personal expression. Colerick leans a little bit more to country and bluegrass than his models, but is still in their mold. Playing acoustic guitar and bringing in a variety of pickers including
Chris Hillman and
Herb Pedersen who add such instruments as mandolin, Dobro, and banjo, Colerick sings in an earnest tenor, recalling his youth in the plains and describing his wholesome present. When he isn't recounting his parents' half-century marriage ("Fifty Miles"), he is celebrating the union of
Johnny Cash and
June Carter Cash ("There's a Light [Ode to June & John]") or paying tribute to his wife ("Time Away"). There are songs that aren't about domestic bliss, such as the biblical rewrite "Eve Ate the Apple" and the lovelorn "Every Single Day," but they tend to be novelties or examples of craftsmanship rather than the declarations of true feeling that the homier songs reflect. It's all well performed and doubtless sincere, but like the lesser efforts of Colerick's precursors and like the pleasant, generic songs one hears on commercials, it doesn't cut very deep. ~ William Ruhlmann