Thursday, September 25, 2014
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
YOUNGSTOWN
Jordan DePaul took a few people by surprise when he played an invitation-only show in his hometown several weeks ago.
The Youngstown native had returned from Nashville, Tenn., where he has been living the past two years. He unveiled his new Music City-inflected sound at the show, which was at Novo Gatto Gallery, downtown.
DePaul was already a veteran of the Youngstown music scene before he moved south. He fronted a mellow pop band in those days, but now his sound falls somewhere on the country-folk-Americana spectrum.
The 25-year-old recently released the five-song EP “Troubles I Had” and has launched a multi-state acoustic tour that will bring him back to Youngstown this Friday for a show at Cedars West End.
He admits that first hometown show caught some of his old friends off-guard. “I shocked them a little bit with the steel guitar,” he said. “A lot of people there hadn’t seen me lately and weren’t expecting [the country sound], but it was all good vibes. I feel like it’s the right direction.”
DePaul has assembled a band that includes Nashville musicians Russ Pahl on pedal steel, Reed Berin on bass guitar, Ed Davis on drums and fellow Mahoning Valley native Dennis Drummond on guitar. Nolan Neal, who produced the EP, also sings background vocals.
He intends to keep this lineup, although the current tour is just him and Brittany Kennell.
“She is from Montreal, and moved to Nashville a few years ago,” said DePaul, who met her while playing a Nashville club. “I had been looking for someone who meshes well with my music and who’s music I really believe in. Her songs are so good, and I knew she wanted to go on tour.”
The co-headlining tour — which also includes Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Bowling Green, North Carolina and Alabama — will be set up as an acoustic songwriter showcase.
DePaul’s new EP reflects his emotional state at the time the songs were written. It is down-tempo with one exception: “Promise You’ll Lie to Me,” a stomping rocker that has radio potential.
“My dad passed away in 2009, and that’s when I decided I wanted to be a songwriter,” said DePaul. “I locked myself in my room and wrote 50 songs. My friends would ask if I wanted to go out, but I didn’t want to.”
That process of grieving, pouring his emotion into music, and then rising up with a new determination is reflected in the album’s cover art. It’s all black except for a symbol hand-scrawled in white: a plus sign over a minus sign.
“I got that tattooed on my forearm,” said DePaul. “It was an idea I had back in January, a positive over a negative. Every negative I’ve turned into a positive. The positive comes out on top.”
As for the move into country and Americana music, DePaul said it wasn’t so sudden.
“I started getting into it a little over two years ago,” he said. “I also was into folk. I always wanted to play folk, and it morphed into that. People think that Nashville is just a country music mecca, but there is a scene here for every type of music. I’m on the perimeter of folk-rock and Americana. It’s what comes naturally to me.”
DePaul said his next album also will have some Southern twang — “maybe a little more,” he said — but will veer more toward Americana.
“It will be more upbeat, but I’m never going to shy away from that slowed-down folk song,” he said. “It’s what I really enjoy doing, and I’m not trying to be anyone else.”