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Simple Motion will begin streaming on Feb. 16, 2024. Until then the CD is available for purchase here, and only here. (No international sales, unfortunately. The postage is just prohibitively expensive. Proper UK will have it available in February.)

Eric Brace and Thomm Jutz have just made their debut album.
A curious fact, given they’ve played a few hundred shows together over the past decade, and have recorded five records together in the company of their musical comrade Peter Cooper.

But with Simple Motion, Eric and Thomm launch the next leg of their varied and impressive careers.

When Peter died in December, 2022, the music world lost one of its brightest and best. And Thomm and Eric lost a musical brother whose creative spark had always inspired them and sent them down new paths together. The question was before them as 2023 dawned: “What next?”
And the answer came easily: Make music.

And so they did. Eric and Thomm began writing songs together, booking gigs, hitting the road, and spending time in Thomm’s recording studio. The resulting 14 tracks capture the duo in different ways. There are songs with just two voices and two acoustic guitars. There are songs with a full band of brilliant players (bassist Mark Fain, drummer Lynn Williams, fiddler Tammy Rogers, banjo players Richard Bailey and Justin Moses, mandolinist Mike Compton, accordionist and piper Jeff Taylor).But however they’re arranged, the songs are full of life and love and beauty and sadness, conveying the joy of being alive while not ignoring the deep blue of loss that these past few years have marked us all with. 

1 - FROST ON THE SOUTH SIDE (3:56)

by Eric Brace & Thomm Jutz
Across the Canadian plains, the rise of wheat cultivation led to manpower shortages, especially during threshing season. From 1890 to 1930, trains from back east called “harvest excursion trains” brought crews of workers west to bring in the wheat. One thing that drove the demand for wheat was the demand for toast. No really! That was on account of the invention of a safe countertop toaster (because who doesn't love hot buttered toast?). But another invention — the combine harvester — made human threshing crews obsolete and took away this guy’s job. I’m fully expecting AI to soon push us singer-songwriters into obsolescence.

2 - BURN (2:40)

by Finn Goodwin-Bain & Thomm Jutz
Do you ever wonder what the heck you're doing here? You, alive, right now, on this planet? As long as you're here, maybe try to bring some light into the world, into the lives of folks around you. Quit cursing and light that candle. Burn.

3 - SIMPLE MOTION (3:18)

by Eric Brace & Thomm Jutz
The parallel lines of railroad tracks helped define the North American continent, moving freight and people from one place to another. And sometimes (as a great folk song reminds us), the same old train that brought you here is gonna carry you away again. Paul Simon sang that everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance. Some insomniacs might disagree.

4 - OUTSIDE VIEWS (3:02)

by Mike Compton & Thomm Jutz
When your mood matches the dreary weather, it’s hard to conjure your muse. Sometimes you can work through it, but sometimes you just have to sit and look out the window and let the weary blues wash over you.

5 - JUST A MOMENT (4:13)

by Eric Brace & Thomm Jutz
During the pandemic, some of my East Nashville neighbors held front yard talent shows for the local kids (socially distanced, of course). One youngster played a fine trumpet. To my ears it was the sound of hope.

6 - CAN’T CHANGE THE WEATHER (3:52)

by Peter Cooper & Thomm Jutz
A true story. We should all sing the chorus over and over to remind ourselves there are always situations we can’t control, broken things we can’t fix, circumstances that are beyond our control. Now, take a deep breath and sing along. (Who’s Lisa Timmons? Our travel agent, of course.)

7 - ANYWHERE BUT HERE (4:14)

by Eric Brace
They say you can’t outrun your troubles, but that doesn’t mean you have to stick around and invite them to supper. Go ahead and go. You just might shake them. It’s a big world. 

8 - WHEN LONDON WAS THE WORLD (3:25)

by Eric Brace & Thomm Jutz
When you’re surrounded by intolerance and hypocrisy, sometimes the best weapon is a swinging song and dance. This cosmopolitan soul whose playground was 1930s Europe is all too aware of the beast among us, and uses a flamboyant arsenal to keep it at bay.

9 - ADAM & EVE (3:51)

by Eric Brace & Thomm Jutz & Bert Van Mourik
Visiting the gorgeous south coast of Ireland, Thomm and I heard the tragic true tale of the fishing boat Tit Bonhomme from our friend Bert. Pointing to two small rocky islands just past the mouth of Glandore Harbour, Bert told us their biblical names and said that sailors knew they had to “avoid Adam and hug Eve.” But on January 15, 2011, during a terrible storm, the Tit Bonhomme couldn’t follow that adage, and paid the price.

10 - WHAT YOU GET FOR GETTING OLDER (3:09)

by Tammy Rogers & Thomm Jutz
If you’re lucky enough to stick around awhile, there comes a moment when you realize there’s probably more life behind than there is up ahead. As that truth kicks in, there’s a deeper appreciation of the passing days. If you’re not pausing to take it all in, Thomm and Tammy wrote you this reminder.

11 - RAMBLE (2:41)

by Eric Brace
Think about it. Most of the walking you do is from one interior space to another: Home to car. Car to store. Office to home. Car to bar. It’s as if the outdoors were an obstacle to overcome to get to the next indoor space. So let’s change how we think about it and get back outside for its own sake. Make no plan, put one foot in front of the other, have no destination, look up at the open sky. You’ll be glad you did.

12 - ARKANSAS (3:47)

by Eric Brace & Thomm Jutz
A phrase overheard, one end of a phone conversation in a shopping center. A woman asking, “Are you on your way to Arkansas?” And me texting those words to Thomm. “This is a song, right?” It was, and it is. Somehow in the writing, a jaunty phrase turned dark and mysterious. Stripped bare but open to interpretation, a simple motion with less-than-simple emotions, a rail line east to west, a bridge across the Mississippi. 

13 - NASHVILLE IN THE MORNING (3:26)

by Trey Hensley & Thomm Jutz
If you’ve spent any time at all in Nashville over the past few years, you’ve seen the changes. They’ve come faster and been more brutal than we could have imagined. The passage of time can be devastating, but time is like geology, layered with the past, a past that’s still there if you know how to look.

14 - SEA FEVER (2:48)

by Eric Brace & John Masefield
John Masefield was poet laureate of the U.K. from 1930 until his death in 1967. In his earlier years he was many things: a barkeep, a carpet maker, a vagrant, and a sailor, but he was always writing. His 1916 volume of seafaring verse, Salt-Water Poems and Ballads, included “Sea-Fever.” That poem landed in my email basket, one of those “Poem of the Day” things you can sign up for. Reading through it, it had the rhythm and spirit of a song waiting to be sung. It turned out there are a few musical versions already out there, but none was satisfying to my ears, so I made up a melody and chords, stitched them to Masefield’s words, and voilà! A brand new old-time folk song.

“And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover, and a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick is over…”

Daytime Highs and Overnight Lows (2020) is Last Train Home’s first new record in more than ten years.
From Eric: “One summer day in 2019, I walked up my East Nashville street carrying a batch of songs to Eric Fritsch’s Eastwood Studios, where I was joined by my fellow Nashvillians Martin Lynds (drums) and Jim Gray (bass) to lay down the rhythm tracks. After that, we recorded Jen Gunderman’s keyboard parts, along with my vocals and guitar, at Thomm Jutz’s studio outside Nashville. Then it was up to D.C. where Jared Bartlett tracked his guitar parts, my brother Alan’s harmonica and voice, Kevin Cordt’s trumpet and Chris Watling’s saxophone, Bill Williams and Scott McKnight’s vocals, and Dave Van Allen’s pedal steel. As Jared began mixing, Scott and Bill were also recording parts in their home studios and sending them to him – guitars, banjo, mandolin, keyboards. There were final touches added by guests Justin Moses (banjo), Thomm (acoustic guitar), and Lindsay Hayes (backing vocals). Jared took all these sounds and mixed them into a record that I think is truly a treat for the ears.”

The trio's first album Profiles in Courage, Frailty, and Discomfort (2016), is fourteen songs by all three members, tackling such weighty topics as moonwalks, steamboat captaining, dollar-slots, Johnny Cash’s gravesite, Jerry Lee Lewis’s birthplace, Willie Nelson’s notions of eternity, the downside of Parkersburg, West Virginia, and a Tennessee town flooded for the sake of electricity.

Eric, Peter, and Thomm each have something distinct and slightly skewed to say about the world, and when they bring their singular perspectives to the trio table, it’s a perfect example of a whole being much greater than the sum of its parts. 

Jerry Lawson, lead singer and founding member of the Persuasions, makes his solo debut at 71 years old. With help from Grammy-nominated producer Eric Brace, Jerry makes the thirteen songs on 2015’s Just a Mortal Man his own, with elegance, heart, and soul. The album features songs from a group of writers including Paul Simon, Robert Hunter, Ayo, Phil Lee, Peter Cooper, and Brace. Jerry pays tribute to two of his heroes, recording tunes from the Temptations’ David Ruffin and Bobby “Blue” Bland. The recordings feature a core band of Nashville's finest: Joe Pisapia on electric guitar, pedal steel guitar, and bass, Jen Gunderman on keyboards, and Duane Blevins on drums.

While guest musicians like Jim Lauderdale and the McCrary Sisters also make appearances on Just a Mortal Man, the album is about Jerry, and his beautiful, powerful, rich, sweet, and smoky voice, heard in a way that it’s never been heard.