ALBUM REVIEW: Eric Brace and Thomm Jutz Keep Moving Through Change on ‘Simple Motion’

In their first duo project, Simple Motion, singer-songwriters Eric Brace and Thomm Jutz suggest responses to inevitable change. That might mean hopping a train or a ship with a certain destination, or one might “Ramble” — stepping outside, “one foot then the other.”

The changes Brace and Jutz navigate are as personal as the loss of their bandmate and “musical brother” Peter Cooper at the end of 2022 and as universal as heartbreak, aging, and the pandemic.

The lighthearted “Can’t Change the Weather,” which Jutz co-wrote with Cooper, was inspired by a flight canceled because of weather, when the members of the trio were stranded far apart — Cooper in Nashville, Brace in Spain, and Jutz somewhere “dreaming of old Waterford town / of Number 9 Whiskey.” The refrain is one of the most direct themes of the album: “If you can’t change the weather / Let the weather blow through.”

“Nashville in the Morning” acknowledges the vast changes in “the town the twang was born in,” with cranes, high-rises, and bridesmaids flooding in against a backdrop of old Nashville — a girl with her guitar, chasing her dream, and someone “working on a song / no one’s gonna hear.”

The title track presents the perspective of someone haunted by a train’s “whistle crying like a ghost” in the distance, making him “wish for everything that’s gone.”  The melancholy “Outside Views” opens with finger-picking reminiscent of “Soldier’s Joy,” giving way to a simple melody as the singer resists the blues, trying to write a song with no help from his muse.

Some of the songs on Simple Motion feature the pair’s harmonies and their two guitars, while others bring in a range of instrumentalists on fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and even accordion and tin whistle. But even on more layered songs, the guitar melodies and harmonies are never overpowered. “Arkansas,” with its simple mandolin tremolo and guitar line, one of the most haunting tracks on the album, addresses a woman traveling to post bail for a gambler the singer thinks undeserving.

Eric Brace, left, and Thomm Jutz (photo by Danielle Piazza)

The tracks tend toward a narrative bent, most often with a folk sound, occasionally venturing into blues, old-time, and even a bit of swing as on “When London Was the World.” The opening track, “Frost on the South Side,” follows itinerant workers around the turn of the last century, riding the train after the wheat harvest has ended. The lyrics hint at one aspect of change as the combine replaces human workers:

Machine won’t break for supper
Machine will always win …

Time’s over for a man like me
Not needed anymore

The strong songwriting on the album conjures up images that stay with listeners: a neighbor’s son playing “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things” on his trumpet during lockdown, the sound of a train’s “whistle crying like a ghost,” London personified in a “top hat and tuxedo / or a string of pearls.” With their musical finesse, Brace and Jutz navigate life’s changes with simple images and simple motions, just the album title suggests.

Eric Brace and Thomm Jutz’s Simple Motion is out Feb. 16 on Red Beet Records.