Is everything OK? Everything’s fine. Uh-oh. Your interpretive skills are just about to be put to the test. That kind of verbal misdirection became an anchor point for Nashville’s Sam Lewis’ 7th studio album, Everything’s Fine. It can be equally true and false at the same time, like when you’re having a bad day but life is generally going well. Or when your own personal sphere is in good shape despite the world going to crap.
For example, Nothing Could Break Us Apart seems like a love song, but when he talks about having “the horse before the cart,” you have to wonder. My Life Living Me is less folk than most of the record, closer to indie pop, and poses an existential question about whether you’re living life as it comes or if subconsciously you’re living the life your younger self expected. I’ll Never Be Enough For You runs squarely down the folk singer-songwriter path wondering about a decaying relationship where “you’re next to me but out of reach.” The Light has a country blues feel and a wish to “go back to when we didn’t know,” in pursuit of simpler times that maybe weren’t simpler.
Not everything on the record is a philosophical question. Making It Up is driven more by the bass and drum lines. It’s inspired by one of Lewis’ mantras when the audience isn’t into the performance and he wants to tell them, “can’t you see me here, I’m at the same show.” Old Love is a little rootsier, and like many cuts features co-producer Joe McMahan on some sweet, almost jazzy, electric guitar. The CD closes with Three Country Highway, an Indigo Girls cover. It’s just Lewis with his guitar and vocals, and despite some metaphorical rough patches and potholes it finishes with love and a happy ending.
When Sam Lewis first played the demo versions of what he brought into the studio he asked McMahan how sparse a record they could make. In a production masterstroke they recorded most of the cuts with just the two of them playing a relatively limited number of instruments. And yet there’s a richness that had me continually going back to the credits to see who else they’d enlisted on a particular song. So for an album that’s at once both simple and complex, check out Everything’s Fine.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.