“Low-key, charming and real”
Peter Guralnick

“Didn’t just fall off the Turnip Truck”
The Washington Post

Some artists stick to the narrow path; others need to wander the landscape a little. They’re not the caged-in kind. They’re more free-range, you might say.

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Jordan Chassan has done some traveling in his time. Over two decades ago, he emerged from Montclair, New Jersey to perform at CBGB and make his mark on the New York club scene with innovative bands like Stuart’s Hammer and the Young Hegelians. In the early 1990s, he moved to Nashville in hopes of refining his idiosyncratic folk/country/jazz/pop blend further. From there, his sonic terrain has gone off the map, taking him to a place somewhere East of Bristol, West of Knoxville.

East of Bristol, West of Knoxville is a Pilgrim’s Progress tour of an American landscape beyond the well-beaten pop music track. “It’s something of a song cycle,” Chassan says.

The woozy delight of “Brandywine” gives way to the bittersweet acceptance of “A Day Like Today”; the hopeful mood of “Things Just Do” shades into the loopy release of “Wound Up Way Too Tight”; the homespun wisdom of “Am I Pleasin’ You?” is a set-up for the wry spirit of “Hard Work Bein’ A Fool.” The poignant longing expressed in “That Destination” echoes through the album as a whole—the dream of a finer world is just out of reach, around the bend on a road through some strange country.

Chassan is uniquely equipped for this journey. His great-uncle was none other than Joe Gould, the Greenwich Village bohemian writer made famous by the New Yorker’s Joseph Mitchell. Gould – also known as “Professor Seagull” – was the author of the semi-legendary “Oral History of Our Time,” a purportedly massive compilation of personal musings and overheard conversations gathered over the decades. Like his ancestor, Chassan is a nonconformist wrestling with his creative muse, which sometimes spirits him away on seagull-like wings into uncharted zones.

This may account for East of Bristol, West of Knoxville’s timeless feel. In some ways, it has the sound of a newly-discovered relic, like a home recording by some unknown master bought at a garage sale. Largely acoustic, the album has a kind of backyard urbanity; the deceptively simple licks and easy-flowing grooves are played with sure hands and enraptured heads. The roster of performers here—including Gillian Welch, harmonica player Jellyroll Johnson, drummers Larry Atamanuik and Pat MacInerny, upright bassists Byron House and Dave Jacques, and steel guitarist Al Goll – is an impressive one. Chassan (guitars, etc.) brings out the best in these players. The album abounds with small touches of brilliance—like the weirdly zestful Baldwin organ on “Wound Up Way Too Tight”—that flash and ripple in unexpected places.

An album like this one couldn’t have been created under normal conditions. Many of its tracks were recorded and mixed at the Inglewood SoundBarn, located behind Jordan’s home in a secluded Nashville neighborhood. The SoundBarn’s vintage equipment and down-home ambiance gives East of Bristol, West of Knoxville its distinctive feel. “A lot of the recording was seat-of-the-pants,” Chassan says. “There’s a rough-hewn quality to it. I used to look for perfection in the studio – now I look for beautiful flaws…”

Happy accidents guided his production hand at key moments: “A lot of times, when I decided on a final mix, it was because the tape ran out just when it was finished. I don’t think it was a coincidence – it was the universe telling me, ‘that’s good enough.’”

East of Bristol, West of Knoxville is Jordan Chassan’s creative road diary, set down in his own resonant language. Honest and sly, seasoned with the sharp angles left intact, this album grows in richness with each listening. It’s the work of a musician who won’t be fenced in, who likes to roam the outer regions of his art. — Barry Alfonso