Americana newcomer Jack Schneider has a laundry list of eclectic descriptors fitting to precede his name—record producer, songwriter, tape machine enthusiast, Vince Gill’s rhythm guitarist, and NYU grad, to name a few—but on November 11, Schneider will be adding “recording artist” to that list with the release of his debut LP Best Be On My Way. Recorded live to tape in Nashville with some of the city’s biggest names—the aforementioned Gill, David Rawlings, Stuart Duncan, and Dennis Crouch—Schneider’s inaugural record is a testament to tradition, timelessness, the modern relevance of old ways, and above all, the necessity of looking at the past in order to know just where you are headed. Riddled with raw truths, compelling stories, and unforgettable sonic motifs, Best Be On My Way is necessary listening for life’s long road ahead. (Jack Schneider, 2022)

Holler premiered Best Be On My Way’s first single, the album-opening “Josephine.” Showing their highest praise for the opening track they stated, “If listening to Jack Schneider feels like traveling back in time then maybe that’s because in some ways you are. Records are capable of taking you places and Jack Schneider and his band have every intention of setting you on a journey back through the years to a time when everything felt a little more real somehow.” The song finds Schneider strumming his beloved 1956 Martin D-28 guitar, “Big Jim,” in front of an all-star band of acoustic musicians. A delicate blend of love and longing, “Josephine” will be a shoo-in for fans of The Band, Bob Dylan, or James Taylor—and contemporary favorites like Gillian Welch, Watchhouse, or The Avett Brothers. Fans can hear “Josephine” right now and pre-order or pre-save Best Be On My Way ahead of its November 11 release.

Best Be On My Way was recorded on a hot day in June at Nashville’s Sound Emporium. Inside the air-conditioned studio, there was a slight quiver in the air—the hum of a tape machine, the impression that the atmosphere was churning inside a black-and-white photograph. The session felt as though it were a real-life culmination of a long and tenuous journey on Schneider’s part, in which he had collected friends and strangers along the way and gathered them together for the odyssey’s retelling. From childhood friends to recent mentors, the motley crew of musicians sat in a wide circle in the live room as around a campfire, much to the contemporarily trained Engineers’ dismay. The players themselves are evidence of a gap Schneider is bridging between musical generations: Grammy award-winning artists Vince Gill and David Rawlings played alongside both Stuart Duncan and Dennis Crouch—longtime Nashville session musicians—and Liv Greene and Griffin Photoglou, two twenty-something artists fresh out of college.

Throughout the long months of quarantine, Schneider began working intensively with former Gruhn Guitars colleague and frequent collaborator, Wes Langlois. Shut up in the studio together for weeks, the two wrote, recorded, and released what they referred to as “vanishing albums:” full-length records accessible for a week at a time each during the pandemic, after which they were removed from streaming services and unavailable for physical purchase. It was from these ephemeral collections of songs that the seed for Schneider’s (permanent) debut record was born.

Best Be On My Way track list:
Josephine
Farewell Carolina
Marietta
Tennessee
Best Be On My Way
Don’t Look Down
Slow Things Down
Nothing Left To Show
In The Morning
Del Rio Blues