Jerry David DeCicca – Cardiac Country

Today, living folk legend Jerry David DeCicca releases Cardiac Country, perhaps his finest and most meaningful work yet, which is saying a lot considering his large body of solo albums and work with Black Swans. Jerry tells his story much better than I ever could, included below. In the face of a health scare, 90% written before his awareness of said issue but perhaps aware on an unconscious level, the songs explore all matters of the heart.

“Long Distance Runner”, a breezy nod to both Haruki Murakami and the Grateful Dead, opens the record, and the combination of Jerry’s voice, Eve Searl’s pearly backing vocals, and the iconic BJ Cole on pedal steel are more than the sum of their parts, setting the stage for an elegant, moody scene.

“Good Ghosts” is a highlight of the record, as who amongst us hasn’t been a little tipsy, alone, and perhaps a bit weepy, kept company by our favorite dead troubadours?

Trevor Nealon’s moody organ playing on “Knives” adds a delightful eeriness to a song about which Jerry simply said, “Yikes!” The following song “Frozen Heart” is a sweet Magnetic Fields-esque tune about “the emptiness of virtual signaling.”

“My Friend” is another favorite, about loss but as always, Jerry’s lyrics hit close to home in a near-uncanny way. Things become more plaintive again on “Dripping Man,” a minimalistic song (with tuba!) about Jerry’s increasing proclivity for tears.

“Mourning Locket,” a gorgeous classic country waltz, and “Old Hat,” an instant modern classic, face down mortality, with a wry smile and earnestness Jerry says are a a return to his old songwriting habits, a departure from the fruit, coffee, and toad songs I first came to know and love.

Cardiac Country is deeply introspective, but hopeful. Jerry is a masterful artist in the craft of personal narrative songwriting, and the outstanding musicianship takes it to new heights. We are so lucky to have Jerry alive and well, renewed, in our presence today.

Get Cardiac Country on Bandcamp now!

I wrote and recorded Cardiac Country, my 6^th solo album, just a few months before I received a diagnosis that led to open heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic to replace my leaky aortic valve. At the time of its inception, I thought I was in the best shape of my life. Only the last song, “Old Hat,” was written and recorded with the knowledge of my health issue. I tracked “Old Hat,” solo acoustic, two weeks before my operation, just in case… You can hear me running out of air as I sing and play.

I listen to these songs now and try to make sense of what my body was telling my pen and guitar, dissecting the information my brain didn’t yet know.

In the opener, “Long Distance Runner,” inspired by Haruki Murakami with a nod to the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain,” I sing “Your heart remains healthy/ for what lies ahead” in the final verse. I hear it not as ironic, but more as an affirmation that I was going to be ok. Other songs, like “Unlit Road” and “My Friend” I sound, quite literally, heart-broken from losing two close friends, one to alcohol and the other to a misunderstanding that snowballed into disrepair. “Mourning Locket” imagines my own hair in the antiquated jewelry, kept by my loved one as a souvenir after I pass. “Good Ghosts,” my favorite song on the album, sits me down on my couch, getting drunk, while listening to records by dead musicians, soaking in their wisdom and heartache, side after side, until bedtime. “Frozen Hearts” is a breezy, Tom T. Hall-ish morality song about the emptiness of virtue signaling and “Where Did My Empathy Go?” chugs through some self-hating, animal-loving vignettes, rhetorically asking myself why I eat meat. “Dripping Man” is about crying all the time (which is why there’s a tuba solo), something I’ve increased in recent years and have now taken to a whole new level. In the months preceding my surgery, I would burst into tears at the grocery, the dentist, the post office, wherever and whenever someone asked me how I was doing. I still cry almost daily, which seems to be “normal” according to other members of my Aortic Valve Facebook support group. Then, there’s… “Knives”… yikes!

If the heart is a metaphor and a muscle, both versions found themselves in my songs like never before. I’m not much of a woo-woo guy, so hearing my own music this way is something I want to reject, but also can’t deny.

I wrote these songs in my living room in Bulverde, Texas in a short quick burst over a couple weeks, wondering at the time what bound them together, while listening to a lot of Don Williams, Lee Dorsey, and Bruce Cockburn with no idea that blood regurgitated down the side of my heart. Being in my late 40’s and in good shape, I didn’t have any obvious symptoms yet. When I first starting writing songs 35 years ago, mortality was one of my favorite subjects, so when I wrote my two-minute closer, “Old Hat,” fearing my heart surgery like I hope to fear nothing ever again, it was a literal tip of the hat to my old self: writing about death, once again, but with its nearness being a less abstract reality.

I cut this record, mostly live, in San Antonio, Texas with my friend, Joe Trevino, at Blue Cat Studios (Flaco Jimenez, Los Texmaniacs) where I worked before with Augie Meyers and Will Beeley. I thought BJ Cole, the pedal steel legend who played with Scott Walker and John Cale, still visited San Antonio yearly, but alas Covid ended that tradition for him, so he self-recorded his parts at his home in London.

The year immediately following the recording of this album was the worst I’ve known. I’ve never been so scared before, and my father passing soon after my surgery didn’t help. I celebrated my first valve-versary (that’s what us Heart Warriors like to call it) by touring Europe with Bill Callahan and Jim White in September 2024. It helped my mood and confidence greatly. I’ve even almost started enjoying the ticking sound of my internal metronome (AKA my On-X mechanical valve). I am different in many ways now, but I can’t figure out how to describe it just yet. Maybe my next record will tell me.

–JDD, January 2025