CD Review: There’s Nothing Desperate About Jerry Castle’s New CD ‘Desperate Parade’

Most people who have been in the music industry for a longtime are typically very skeptical and critical of music and new musicians who hit the scene today because fore the most part a good majority of the new music out there is undeniably manufactured.   The well-polished country pop sound is not popular with most musicians and songwriters in my circles, so it was refreshing on my first run through of Jerry Castles’ CD, to find a genuine musician who has a real singer-songwriter feel to his music.   True American grit infused with country, rock and blues, is how to describe Jerry Castle’s first cut ‘Precious Time’ on his CD Desperate Parade that will be released on June 25.  Each song at least for me, seemed to be written from the heart and based on true- life experiences about living life in America; finding and losing love, but not in the ‘she done me wrong way’; and making mistakes and learning from them.

What Castle writes and what you hear in his lyrics and musical arrangements can only be written and performed genuinely if the musician lives what he sings about, and I can tell that Castle has lived it.   For me that’s how it should be.   Castle seems to connect with how life in America is today, and I am sure listeners will relate to at least one of his songs on this CD.    Castle’s songs throughout the CD transition from roots, to blues to rock n roll to Americana country. 

The song “Star Spangled Lies” could be a throw back to the 1960s and 1970s when musicians like Dylan and Lennon sang protest songs against the Vietnam War.   You can hear Castle’s raw vulnerability of American life in these lyrics.  

The impatience you find in the lyrics of the song “ Precious Time,” are true-to-life for us all,  but perhaps the one song on his CD that resonates so well with me, is the song ‘So Far From Heaven’ where Castle talks about how a great relationship goes bad then both parties question how they got so far away from each other and question how they can find each other again. 

The first release off of Desperate Parade is ‘Calm,’ a light-hearted song written by Jerry Castle, Mando Saenz and Chad Brown with breezy lyrics that tell us basically to stop worrying about everything and live life.   It could very well be a breakout song of the summer in Americana music and country music circles.   

Skepticism aside, there’s some new music and a singer songwriter to add to my Spotify Playlist, who in his own right, is both refreshing and genuine.