Jack M. Jose's debut album, Ashland, Someplace is a deeply personal reckoning, while at the same time serving as a universal yearning for making sense of the world in which we all live. If the adolescent seeds of this album were first germinated at a 7th grade study hall desk, under fluorescent lights, dreaming of the girl across the aisle, they find their fruition in an entirely mature released rage at the injustice of a modern, urban world. The track "Driving Back to Ashland" is the closest thing to a title track on the album. As such, it serves as the linchpin that holds the rest of the album together. "Driving Back to Ashland" captures the nostalgia of returning to one's childhood home, only to find that nothing is the same as you remember, that you are not the same, and that you can never return to what once was. Each of the other tracks on the album mark moments that have crafted that adult who can't return to the simplicity and innocence of an earlier time. While every experience opens doors and broadens our horizons, they also change us indefinitely, and it is this inevitable, and often painful, sculpting of the self that leads to the universal longing that Jose has captured in this work. Ashland, Someplace explores these pervasive experiences of loss and longing -- reckoning with broken relationships, misunderstandings, mental instability, inequality, immorality, prejudice, greed, sorrow, and always the desire to understand and accept oneself, and to be understood and accepted by others. While the album touches on some dark motifs and themes, it is ultimately more exploratory and questioning than it is hopeless. The poetic lyrics, driving drumbeats, and expressive guitar solos bring the listener back for more, such that nuances and deeper meanings are gleaned seemingly with each new listen of the album. While, on the surface, it is about Jose's individual journey, ultimately it is about the journey that each of us takes as we navigate the twists and turns that life throws at us. Covering two decades of songwriting, Ashland, Somewhere opens with "Nothing At All" - a songwriter contemplating escape from a basement to instead perform for an audience. His ideas echo in the books he reads, music he hears, and the art he encounters, and he realizes the hope and fear that accompanies the idea that others might want to hear what you have to say. "We're all afraid of the same thing: you might be, or you might not be, alone." "Money Doesn't Fix Everything (For Too Long)" When will I have enough money to marry her, or - first - to get her to look my way? "When Did I Die?" Following the suicide of someone close, joyless weeks of silence slid by. From the ashes of grief rose a protest, a fight for life, and the story of a couple choosing to save a marriage that once sparked them like electricity. Heroin sweeps our country like a second dust bowl, leaving hollowed and dried out shells of people strewn across the streets like tumbleweed. The songwriter borrows an image from The Grapes of Wrath. In the same week that one woman buried her husband and her son who had overdosed together and were found in the same dark hour, a stranger rolled from his car back-flat onto the pavement in front of the house, and earth itself could hear her plea. "Children watch their fathers' faces / look for signs of weakness / and imitate their strength / What happens when they break? What happens when they break? / No promise in the wind, malice from the sun / And all our tools are rust, the stars can't pierce the dust / The stars can't pierce the dust and the moon won't shine for us." "Undeclared War" Men build casinos in the city and and drain other men dry, or send poorer men off to fight billion dollar wars, meanwhile claiming good health care is unaffordably luxurious. These men, shells of another sort, have "built themselves temples all downtown / and they're on the highest floors / winning an undeclared war." "I'm Breathing" In 2005 a man parked his SUV on the morning commuter train tracks in Glendale CA, planning to end his life. This is what happened when he changed his mind moments before impact. "Driving Back to Ashland" is Jack's most autobiographical song. Returning to his hometown of Ashland, Ohio for his 15th class reunion, he learns that almost everyone there is trying to solve a problem or right a wrong. The agonies we felt in high school remain trapped, as if in amber, and contained in our own peculiar personal museums. "You can't escape the pain, you can't go home again / everything has changed / you've changed." He walks the town with his ghosts and visits favorite date night spots, the old house, and the digital bank clock on main street where he and his best friend stood at midnight on New Year's eve to usher in the new year. Maybe you can't go home because you never really left. "Foot in Both Worlds" Why wouldn't he enter the funeral home? The question nagged at me for weeks after. His family was calling him in, but he resisted their call to stand next to his father one last time. It turns out that there were many suitors for his attention. A legacy. His teachers. His future. His friends. And the coffin. Maybe his resistance was an act of self preservation. Time will tell. The only song on the album captured in one live take, "Thought I'd Know" is a breakup song from the perspective in the moment between surprise and the realization that it was the right decision. Even when breaking up is the right thing to do, there is a sting when it happens to you. He speaks in the moments after emerging from the grief, and considers the dangers of exposing one's self to deep attachment: "I feel numb / My mouth and eyes are dry / I feel numb / a tranquilizer high" ... "I never opened up / nothing ever meant that much." Marked by Ben's slow burn on the drums, Back Roads Home juxtaposes the responsibilities of adulthood against the all too real passions of adolescence and a child who longed only for the love of her mother. In Ashland, one could take the back roads home to delay an inevitable consequence, or just to air out from a tough day, or test the limits of your car and the road. While in Cincinnati, a lonely girl tests different boundaries, and contemplates an alternative route to a different metaphorical home. A dialogue between a frightened person and President Donald Trump's twitter account in a lonely late afternoon, Kleptocracy reveals the true nature of those who hold nothing more dear than their personal wealth and sense of power. "I say it cause I can, I take it cause I can, I break it cause I can / It's all the same to me / in the kleptocracy" Meanwhile, the victim holds back from screaming, visceral reaction to the horror of his touch suppressed behind a thin filament of decorum "You should see my face / everything's erased / my lobotomy / the surface of the sea."