We Speak Music
Jason Ricci Lays It All Down on 13 Hours
Jason Ricci plays harmonica like he has something to prove and a limited amount of time to prove it. On 13 Hours, recorded at Dockside Studios in Louisiana, he delivers the kind of record that makes you feel like you caught him on a night when the filter was completely off. This is his third album for Gulf Coast Records, and it sounds like a man who stopped caring what anyone thinks somewhere around album one and has been getting more comfortable with that decision ever since.
The opening track sets the tone fast. “Sick of This Shit” is exactly what it sounds like, biting, frustrated, and funny in the way that only real exhaustion can be funny. Ricci is not playing a character here. He is airing it out, and the band locks in behind him with the kind of groove that makes the whole thing feel more like a late night argument at a bar than a polished studio performance. That is meant as a compliment.
Renegade is the album’s fist in the air. It is loud and it means it. Big DisEasey pulls from the New Orleans well without being precious about it, the swagger is earned, not borrowed. Bubble Gum Pop lands as a deliberate exhale, a wink that acknowledges how absurd this whole thing is, which is the mark of someone who genuinely understands the blues rather than just performing it.
Kaitlin Dibble steals two of the album’s most important moments. Long Twisted Night, which she wrote, is a slow gut punch about loving someone who is being destroyed by addiction. It is not theatrical about it. It just sits in that feeling and stays there until you feel it too. The title track, written in memory of drummer John Perkins who passed away, is where the record finds its emotional bottom. Dibble sings it plainly, which is the right call. The song does not need decoration.
Ricci’s own life runs underneath all of it, the Blues Music Awards, the Grammy collaborations, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stages, but also the addiction, the homelessness, the hard years that he has never tried to hide. None of that is wallpaper here. It is the foundation the whole record is built on, and you can feel the difference between someone writing about struggle and someone writing from inside it.
13 Hours is dedicated to John Perkins. It is rough in the right places, honest without being self-pitying, and played by people who have been doing this long enough to know that the blues is not about misery. It is about what you do with it.
We Speak Music
Phoebe June Traces Love, Distance and Heartbreak on New EP ‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’
For Phoebe June, some stories are easier to tell through music.
Her new EP, ‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’, is an intimate collection that traces the emotional journey of a relationship from the exhilaration of falling in love to distance, uncertainty, heartbreak and, ultimately, learning to let go.
Inspired by artists including Gracie Abrams, Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers, Phoebe June combines diary-like lyricism with melancholic ballads, subtle uptempo moments and an understated, emotionally honest production style.
At the centre of the project is ‘Thursday’, a bittersweet track about loving someone from a distance and holding onto the hope that the connection might survive.
Written after Phoebe left a country that held deep personal meaning, and left someone she cared about behind, the song looks back at the relationship from its beginning. Even its title is personal: the two first met on a Thursday.
The song captures the complicated feeling of walking away from something meaningful without believing that it necessarily has to be over. It’s about distance, memory and the possibility of finding your way back to someone, while recognising that hope only works when it goes both ways.
Across six tracks, the EP develops that story in sequence.
‘Everything You Are’ opens the project with the warmth of new love, while ‘Dead Sea’ explores the security of finding someone who helps you stay afloat through difficult times. As the story progresses, ‘Thursday’ introduces separation before ‘Getaway Car’ moves into the aftermath; unanswered questions, lingering attachment and the realisation that someone can profoundly affect your life while still being unhealthy for you.
‘One Day’ leaves the door open to the possibility of a future reunion, balancing hope with the understanding that some relationships may only exist in memory.
The EP closes with ‘Ophelia’, its emotional breaking point. Inspired in part by Friedrich Heyser’s painting of the same name, the track confronts the pain of feeling manipulated and unappreciated after giving everything to someone else.
The result is a project that deliberately moves from light to dark. Phoebe June considered not only the narrative but the emotional progression when sequencing the EP, allowing the brightness of its opening to gradually give way to the heartbreak of its closing moments.
Even the title reflects that feeling.
‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’ takes its name from a flower, with the image of a gate separating two people becoming a metaphor for a love that remains beautiful but just out of reach. To reach over it requires effort, just as maintaining a connection across distance, uncertainty and changing circumstances does.
Ultimately, Phoebe June isn’t interested in simply documenting her own heartbreak.
She wants listeners to recognise themselves in it.
‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’ is a collection about love, nostalgia, hope and regret and about what remains when something beautiful ends up on the other side of the gate.
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