JD Hinton
Traveler
Wide Brim Music
The title of Traveler, the new EP from JD Hinton, paints life as a journey. You can pull out your personal life-map and trace where you’ve been and where you are now, and chart a path to where you hope to go.
In a sense, Traveler reflects Hinton’s own route through life. Since leaving Texas, headed for Los Angeles, he’s been a disc jockey and an actor, appearing in film and television: Dynasty, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Mork and Mindy, and CBS’s Jane the Virgin, as well as AppleTV’s The Morning Show, starring Reese Witherspoon.
Hinton’s sound, often compared to Leonard Cohen, Peter Gabriel, and Robbie Robertson, conjures up wistful memories, tender regret, and the miraculous delight of being alive, which explains why his music is frequently featured in movies: Gloria, Tick-Tock, and Mark Medoff’s Children on Their Birthdays, underscored by Celine Dion singing his song, “I Have to Dream.”
Traveler comprises five tracks. Entry points include “The Other Side,” a song about the delicious feeling of starting over. Hinton’s raspy voice, somewhere between tenor and baritone, imbues the lyrics with thoughtful, revealing tones riding over a syncopated rhythm and gleaming guitars. It’s a song full of realization. The realization that there’s always more “on the other side.”
Vaguely reminiscent of Stevie Ray Vaughan crossed with Chris Isaak, the dirty, swampy blues textures of “Trouble Time” immerse listeners in the clutches of sticky quicksand – the morass of urges that threaten to push you off course.
Low-slung and drifting, “Exiles in Madrid” narrates spur-of-the-moment disruption of life’s status quo. Abandoning everything, you plunge into a new way of life, unstructured and free of limitations.
“Close the door / Leave the key / Let’s go / We’ll be exiles in Madrid / We’ll find some little place to live / We’ll learn Spanish from a kid on the street.”
A personal favorite because of its swaying, harmonic flow, “My Time Has Come” blends Americana and alt-rock surfaces into a gorgeous, stirring song drenched in the possibilities of confidence and resolve.
“No running from / No time for fear / This is my time / My time has come.”
In today’s world, an era of constant distractions and self-absorption, Traveler inspires listeners to live the lives they want to live.
