Kevin Gordon - The In Between (2024) Hi-Res

The flow of young talent out of Nashville, Texas, Kentucky and other musical hotbeds has been amazing to see over the past few years – I’m hearing more good music each week than I can possibly write about. But I like perspective, too – someone who’s lived some years and seen some stuff. Louisiana-raised (and Nashville-based) singer-songwriter Kevin Gordon has gone through more than most, from a rough childhood to a cancer diagnosis early in the recording process of his most recent album. That record, The In Between, is out now, and it finds the 60-year-old singer physically healed, but still not nearly settled.

The In Between rips right out the gate with twangy rocker “Simple Things.” Written during the pandemic (an event which, it occurs to me, will stay in the collective artistic conscience for much longer than we realized), the song took on greater weight for Gordon as he was enduring throat cancer treatments, wondering if he’d even be able to sing again (he jokes, with only a hint of regret, “Unfortunately, nothing changed with my voice!”). From the weary sadness in front of him – “Fourteen months since I’ve seen/A smile crease the corner of your eyes” – to the seemingly simple pastimes we all missed – “But maybe soon I can hold your hand/Drink a beer in a bar and hear a rock ‘n’ roll band” – Gordon adeptly drops the listener right back into the silent summer of 2020. Knowing what he went through personally around that time makes the song an even more poignant reminder that we’re never getting that time back.

The album’s second release, “Keeping My Brother Down,” addresses another topic that’s had lasting repercussions – what his friend and fellow musician Kenny Stinson called “all that old Southern shit.” The greasy-guitar tune started off as a missive on Emmett Till’s 1955 murder – “Sunk his body in the river/’Cuz what disappears can’t do no harm/No justice ever found/For a mother’s murdered son” – but soon expands to a litany of deaths of young Black men, the title twisting the idea of “I am my brother’s keeper” into something depraved. Gordon’s experience and empathy as a Southern White man also comes through in “Marion,” which describes the problems faced by those who find themselves constantly othered – “I was too white to see his cage/He had to keep himself tucked in just to survive.” The song also serves as a scathing indictment of our early AIDS (non-)treatment policies – “Then Reagan won/And the virus was a mystery/But not the apathy nor the hate/From the nation or the state.” It’s yet another time we failed to be our brother’s keeper.

Other songs on The In Between find Gordon considering what it means to be six decades into life and still making music. The title track is a quieter meditation on the space between youth and death – Woke up this morning, wondering where it all went/Thirty years of yearning and miles and money spent.” “Love Right” is an uptempo quest to treat the folks in your life the way they ought to be treated, from first loves to family – “He’s made himself a better man/Took me 40 years to realize/You do the best you can/Accept and understand.” And album capper “You Can’t Hurt Me No More,” written with Kim Richey and dripping with great guitars from Gordon and producer Joe V. McMahan, traces a failed love affair from heartache – “I love you still/Against my will/My stupid heart beats on and on” – to acceptance and a sort of release – “You didn’t drop me like a gunshot/When I saw you today.” For Gordon, that ability to say goodbye is one of the gifts – and one of the saddest parts – of growing older.

Song I Can’t Wait to Hear Live: “Tammy Cecile” – acoustic, slide and fiddle help Gordon, a truly gifted storyteller. reminisce about the girl whose many red flags are just part of her charm – “We had the requisite break-up sex/Just a couple of naked wrecks/Laid out on your floor/As your new friend was walking up the porch steps/To your door.”