Jace Everett carries a torch for Mark Eitzel and American Music Club

Jace Everett’s recommendation: “One that I always go back to is American Music Club. Mark Eitzel was the singer and songwriter of the group. “Never in my life/Have I ever seen/Such a mess,” an epic line from an amazing song, Johnny Mathis’s Feet sums it all up pretty well. These are songs of hopelessness and despair so beautifully rendered that they actually inspire hope!”

New to American Music Club? Jace suggests you start here: “The band made several records throughout the ’80s, but I didn’t discover them until Mercury, their major label debut in the early ’90s. Some AMC purists decried this record as a “sell-out,” which is just fucking hilarious. Half the songs are in 6/8. The lyrics are crushingly good; funny, beautiful, heartbreaking. Each album has shining moments, but if you can’t get into Mercury, you may need to check your soul for a pulse.”

MP3: Only Love Can Set You Free by American Music Club from Patriot Songs For Lovers

About our guest author, Jace Everett: Jace is a former preacher, traveling musician, and truck driver who hit the big time when music supervisor Gary Calamar picked his Bad Things cut from his first album to back the opening montage of HBO’s vampire show, True Blood (see the credit sequence here). Jace took his newly found fame and enlisted Chuck Prophet to produce and co-write his latest album, Red Revelations, a wonderful modern mix of folk, pop, and roots based music. Be sure to visit Jace’s site to sign up for his newsletter updates and check the clip below about the new song he recorded for True Blood.