About the Artist

The Contenders have made an album that only this brand of troubadour’s optimism could have inspired. A tacit assumption, based on experience, that people are generally good and want the same things. But there’s a flip side, and “Laughing with the Reckless” is basically a sad album, as it deftly conveys that unique heartbreak that comes from having allowed oneself to be so hopeful — from being intimately connected to so many different kinds of people, knowing the joyful communion that comes so naturally when we’re together, and confronting the reality of how often and severely we fail to live up to that potential. For a troubadour, observing current American political discourse is like watching two brothers bludgeon each other in a fistfight, or two best friends get divorced. The people screaming at each other these days are not strangers to us. We know them. We’ve slept on their couches.

So “Laughing with the Reckless,” with all its infectious rhythms and sublime 2-part harmonies, grew out of those moments that are only possible when people “come together,” a phrase which, crucially, is not used on this album as a platitude. It’s meant literally. When Jay Nash and Josh Day sing, “if we all come together, we can see the light,” they mean actually, physically come together, as they have done with so many people for so long. They mean sit, eat, drink, talk, laugh, brag, embellish, confess, ramble, share, and reveal parts of ourselves we never meant to. The parts we might not even reveal to those who think they know us best, choosing instead to entrust our best secrets to the safekeeping of a stranger. When we do that, we find that our religion, our politics, our grievances almost never come to the forefront of the conversation, no matter how much of each other’s whiskey we drink. Our families, our work, our adolescent missteps, our friends, our sick parents, our hobbies, our songs, our favorite bands, our dreams — these are what are shared, because these, apparently, happily, are what actually define a person.

Not many people know what it feels like, I fear, to be in so many strangers’ homes sharing music and stories, food and drink. But the troubadour knows. We do it all the time. And The Contenders mean to let you know it’s real, it gives them hope, and, lately, it breaks their hearts.