BJ Barham remains part of a band called American Aquarium but penned these songs quickly after being stuck on tour after plane delays caused by a terrorist attack in Brussels.
The short, simple acoustic material is more personal and is about what home means to him. This is why he didn't see the tunes fitting easily into the canon of his band and decided to release them on his first solo album.
There's a general mood of nostalgia together with hints of a love-hate relationship with small town life. As a musician he views this working class world as an outsider but clearly empathizes with the traditional values of the inhabitants.
In seeking funds to make the record he described the songs as "a road map to where I came from" which is, specifically, a small North Carolina town called Reidsville.
However, somewhat unexpectedly, this doesn't mean they are autobiographical. Instead he has penned a series of fictional narratives which are presumably based upon the people and attitudes he encountered while growing up. The one exception is Madeleine, a song pondering what fatherly advice he can convincingly impart to his daughter to be.
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Aside from this, the subjects are primarily affectionate portraits of blue collar workers and disillusioned dreamers. The title tune, for example, is about a 28 year old man who works a 40 hour week selling auto parts to provide for his wife and two kids.
They are well constructed songs but the objective tone means that they are less involving than if he were truly telling his own story
As it stands, therefore, the overriding message is that home defines your perspective on the world but in true, and somewhat predictable, Springsteenian style he also affirms (in Reidsville) that your true identity can be gleaned from what car you drive.
In this sense the eight songs merely serve to endorse a flawed way of life but he at least has the grace to acknowledge just how often real life falls short of the American dream.
BJ Barham's website
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