The Oldest

For "The Oldest", Simpson has teamed up with long-time friend & Grammy-winning
golden boy/engineer/producer Eddie Spear (Zack Bryan, Brandi Carlisle, Sierra Ferrell). The album took them three years to wrap but you'll find that it's the kind of
gift that keeps giving. These eleven gems let us converse with a man deeply concerned
with his own humanity, the state of the world's despair, and our collective role to simply
be the arm around each other's slumped shoulders.
The premiere song, 'Nothing At All', plunges us into an ethereal honky-tonk and a lovely
encounter with Life herself. Yes, you read that correctly. It's the kind of Simpson
storytelling device you'll come to expect yet still marvel. "Truth is most folks go to bed in
their head with the dream of me/then wake up with no room for the reality". It's a tender
yet jarring wake-up call that we are the authors of our destiny and Simpson's wisdom
reminds us there's no middle ground with living.
As you'll experience, Simpson has an uncanny way of storytelling where he often
creates unexpected characters to be the ones to teach us the most valuable of lessons.
For example in the titular track, The Oldest, he uses a shoplifting senior and a tipsy
teenager to offer up a subtle, unconventional take on grace and understanding. On
other tracks, he'll use a bullied boy and a prom princess to show the power of trying to
be "Brave". The heartrending "L.A. Earthquakes" details the frantic middle-of-the-night
voicemail of a nowhere man's zealous plea to his lovelorn girlfriend. "I lost you and I still
ain’t found me". Mercy, that's good. In "End of the World", Simpson calls out wizard-
themed dog parks and even the demise of ol' Kris Kringle. It's all wrapped in an oddly
romantic correspondence which, again, plays well. "Get Lucky" is his imagined
encounter with his songwriting hero, Cowboy Jack Clements, and the presumable
advice he'd give the young man about Nashville, life, and, ultimately, his "time behind
the pen". And possibly the best example of them all is the tall tale from "People Are
Funny That Way", about an Oklahoma aspiring artist who ends up finding his crowd
"singing George Strait songs downtown at the Ten Gallon Cowboy gay bar".
The songwriting is front and center without a doubt with even some of the tracks getting
a full-on acoustic treatment. However, Simpson & Spear stretch their production legs
throughout. There's the hypnotic canon interplay of the electric guitars on Nothing At All,
Billy Contreras' fiddle taking a trip to the carnival halfway through the lamenting "Out of
Sorts", and, of course, there's the banjo of guru and old colleague, Matt Menefee, rolling
throughout the album but highlighted in "Wildflowers for Mama". The production pièce
de résistance occurs in "Who Hurt You". The undertone of a drum roll reminiscent of a
tightrope walk performance occurs moments after a big crescendo that seems to be the
climax of this particular ballad, yet in that moment you realize that she's still unrelenting
to let the pain be known and this isn't a conversation but rather a desperate plea for
salvation. That idea formulates because of production. Yes, it's that sonically poignant.
With "The Oldest", Bryan Simpson is gifting us with his most transcendent studio album
to date, a formidable quote considering his body of work thus far. It's a significant
milestone in his musical journey. A testament to his growth as an artist and his
unwavering commitment to authenticity.