Richard Cabesa’s Music Blog

Stumbling on the Edge of Greatness is an autobiographical look at the Texas musician.  Grider sings about the trials and hardships of trying to make it in a tough musical market and dreams of making a name for himself.  I’m sure all of you have witnessed your favorite band loading and unloading equipment just to play in front of 50 people.  This is Grider’s tribute to all those bands.  This one line says it all -  “I got no flight plan, just a big white van, a trailer and a band and we just ride around…hopin’ the people dig our sounds.”  Poorer Days really delivers a similar message, but moreso about learning from past mistakes and moving forward.  It’s not a song that you will hear on mainstream radio, but it works just fine in Texas but he’s lived it and it’s not fabricated.  Crazy Like You is the first single released to radio and is already up to #22 on the Texas Music Charts.   The song was written about his wife and I love the pace and beat of the song.  And the song is so true.  “Everybody’s crazy so what you need to do is find somebody crazy like you, someone that you can fuss and fight with and when you make up you can love all night with.”  By far, the best song on the album.  Having Texas legend Walt Wilkins providing vocal backup doesn’t hurt either.   

Fellow artist Drew Kennedy co-wrote Hand to Hold with Grider, and Grider is joined by his wife Kristi on the album for this song.   She takes the lead on this song that has a serious touch of reality and being lonely.  Another song on the album that strikes the lonely cord is the fiddle-led shuffle Rusty Cowboy.  Probably Will is a song that sounds really nice to the ear and talks about the struggles between his heart and his mind, and what he will probably do when she wants him back.  Very catchy.  I’m probably about to hit a touchy subject for some.  Whether you agree with the war in the middle-east or disagree, I think everybody agrees that supporting the troups and showing appreciation is absolutely the right thing and the most patriotic thing that any of us regular people can do.  However, when I hear Toby Keith and Daryl Worley, and countless others disquise the reality of what is going on in Iraq with macho lines like “stick a boot in your ass” and crap like that, you think enough is enough.   It’s not as if I don’t like their work, but just not here.  Then you have tasteful patriotism from artist like Shelly Wright that draw from personal friends and family that live with the reality of the war.  Travis Blues is Grider’s attempt at this, and it too is done with great taste.  Young Travis in this song is his best friend’s brother and takes a different approach to writing about Iraq, by asking questions in the song about what it’s like and what he’s seeing over there.   

Grider’s best performance on the album may be on the love song Emma.  The lyrics are strong and Grider is even better.  When I first listened to Love Went Wrong, I thought to myself the same thing - where did this song go wrong.  But after the second and third listen, it grew on me and I realized the greatness of it.  It’s different for sure, but I felt like I was listening to something from the 1950s, and that’s not a bad thing at all.  Tragic Circumstance is an old school song about living fast and paying the price later.  The  meaning of the song has been done hundreds of times in different ways by so many different artists, but Grider holds his on here.  Broken on Broadway is the one throwaway song that I mention on almost every album review.  It just doesn’t work for me.  The album closes with the title track, Million Miles To Go.  It’s a fitting closer as it’s very similar to the opener, Stumbling on the Edge of Greatness.  It’s pretty much the same message recapping the past several years of his life on the road, but has a strong Kenny Rogers feel to it.  That alone makes it a good song.  

Million Miles To Go is an excellent album.  However, I’m not sure it matched his previous album from three years ago.   The autobiographical look at life on the road is almost overdone on the album.  There are too many songs that deal with being on the road and traveling from show to show and back home.   At the same time, though, that theme kind of lends itself to support the title of the album.   One does have to appreciate the honesty of telling his own stories and experiences.   I think there is a bit of energy missing from this album that was present on the first one, but there is enough good work, that I’m not willing to give up on Grider.  I think his potential is enormous and a great future is not out of his reach.  He himself has acknowledged that with the title of this album - Million Miles To Go.  Except, I would say he’s not quite that far away.  Josh Grider is Stumbling on the Edge of Greatness.