Album Review: Josh Grider – Million Miles To Go

Nearly a week ago Josh Grider charmed the audience gathered at Hill’s Cafe for the KVET Free Texas Music Series with his awry dance style and meticulous guitarmanship, but it was his scrupulously-crafted lyrics that won me over.

Whether it was the autobiographical “Stumbling On the Edge of Greatness” or the co-penned “Rusty Cowboy” you could feel the authenticity radiating through the night (or maybe that was the Hill Country humidity). Grider’s wife stood by his side, joining in on vocals when she had a part. She shuffled to the back of the stage for a sip of water sometime during “Crazy Like You”, a song that quips that everyone is crazy, so you might as well find someone that’s crazy like you. I felt like an outsider watching two lovers share a personal moment when Grider sang “so I found me a girl and she’s five foot four / and I’ve never found a girl that I adore more” and a lusturous smile crept over his wife’s face, still standing behind him just out of his view.

Fast foward to today, the release of Million Miles To Go allows anyone to enjoy the delightfulness of those lyrics and his live shows on a studio album.

He opens with the aformentioned “Stumbling On the Edge of Greatness”, a song that can apply to anyone taking a risk by chasing their dreams. He sings “taking a chance on a maybe / might be the next Johnny-come-lately / but you can’t never tell.” These same introspective musings permeate the album on songs like “Poorer Days”, “Travis Blues”, and “Million Miles to Go”, and provide a depth to his lyrics that’s absent in many of his Texas Country contemporaries.

Aside from producing the album, Walt Wilkins appears with his band of Mystiqueros on “Crazy Like You,” the song seemingly about Grider’s wife who he lets carry the load on his co-write with Drew Kennedy, “Hand to Hold”. It’s a song about two people consumed by loneliness with the brilliant line “the morning coffee warms his throat / but it never wakes his soul” — a line that perfectly captures the emptiness felt from being alone. Loneliness rears it’s head again, and is punctuated by the fiddle, in “Rusty Cowboy”.

Grider uses the title track as a bookend for the main part of the album and to acknowledge all the great ones who have come before him. In the grand scheme of things he realizes he still has a lot to accomplish. A bonus track appears at the end where he’s once again joined by his wife for a cover of Johnny Cash’s “If I Were a Carpenter”.

During an acoustic set earlier this year Grider told the crowd that whenever his parents ask him what he’s doing with his life he responds “I’m stumbling on the edge of greatness,” and with each subsequent spin of Million Miles To Go I’m more and more inclined to believe him myself. Keep your fingers crossed for Josh Grider, he’s got the goods.

MySpace: Josh Grider Band (there’s currently three songs from the new album available)