Post by Admin on Aug 26, 2020 6:31:03 GMT
Joel Crouse was onstage at Gillette Stadium in 2013 singing his debut country single “If You Want Some” while 55,000-plus Taylor Swift fans found their way to their seats. It was a home-state gig for Crouse, a native of Holland, Massachusetts, and the then-21-year-old was wrapping up his leg of opening Swift’s Red Tour. Ed Sheeran was on the run too, and the songwriters, about the same age, became friends and sounding boards for each other.
“I’d walk off, fist-bump Ed, who’s going on stage, and there’d be an SUV bringing us back to the hotel. It’s everything I would have ever wanted,” the 28-year-old Crouse tells Rolling Stone.
Except it wasn’t. While certain elements of fame were superficially rewarding to Crouse, he knew he wasn’t living up to his potential. He had an album of country songs in the can, awaiting release by the now-defunct Show Dog-Universal label, but when he heard what Sheeran was writing, it left Crouse feeling less than.
“Ed was playing me his Multiply [X] record on that tour, and I was like, ‘This is so fucking cool.’ I remember playing him songs off my country album and I felt so insecure. ‘Cause I wasn’t proud of it,” he says of 2014’s Even the River Runs, released a full year after his high-profile Swift tour. “I finished it when I was 18 and I had already outgrown that music, so I’m playing him music that was completely dated to me.”
One night while watching Sheeran onstage, Crouse had a revelation.
“I felt like, ‘Why am I not happy? Why am I feeling like shit?’ I’m 21 and on the biggest tour of 2013, and literally my dreams are coming true, but things just aren’t sitting right. Watching Ed was one of the first moments where I thought, ‘I’m young enough to go back and start doing pop and rock.'”
Crouse was already used to hearing that his brand of music wasn’t country enough. “I remember promoting ‘If You Want Some’ and people were like, ‘He’s too pop. He’s from Massachusetts, not from the South,” he says. “And how much shit I got for wearing a beanie was unreal. Zac Brown can pull it off, ’cause he’s from Georgia, but you take a Boston kid wearing a beanie? No way.”
“Joel sees the world in such a Joel kind of way and I love that,” says Darius Rucker, a friend and collaborator. “He has a sense of melody like no one I have been around. I think that comes from the way that his voice is so unique, so original. He’s had to come up with things that were different because he sounded different.”
Earlier this month, seven years after his musical epiphany, Crouse finally released music that celebrates his idiosyncrasies, the EP Wasteland. A collection of seven expertly crafted pop songs, it is the sound of a man who has earned his voice.
Listening to it back-to-back with Even the River Runs is a night-and-day experience. Most noticeably, the incongruous-for-a-New-Englander twang Crouse adopted for country music is gone. The bright optimism inherent in country-radio songs is also missing, replaced by a more realistic worldview, one that’s been shaped by bad luck, bad decisions, and the realization that life can be a long series of pitfalls.
Crouse, who was raised in a strict household as the son of a pastor, learned this firsthand. Over a four-year stretch, he survived a serious car accident; weathered tabloid scrutiny for his relationship with the actress and singer Lucy Hale; went to rehab for a pill addiction; and watched his business manager be sentenced to six years in prison for fraud. In the aftermath, Crouse lost his apartment, car, and health insurance. He says he turned to “food stamps,” applying for SNAP benefits, to help purchase groceries.
“I’ve had a lot of trust situations where I probably trusted the wrong people, but this one really fucked with me. This is the dude that pays your rent, your insurance, everything,” he says. “I was coming out of the Taylor tour with weird credit card debts. I had four bank accounts; I had access to one. I was such a young kid. I regret not paying attention."