News:

09-27-04:

Houston Press: “the most complete album of his solo career.”
“These aren’t disposable Ryan Adams pop-star songs scribbled on wet napkins at the spur of a drunken moment. Like Hemingway once said of Nelson Algren, ‘This is a man writing.’ ”
Click here to read the article.

09-22-04:

From the Smoky Mountain News:
It took a while, but The Great Battle grew on me. It’s the fourth solo release from Jon Dee Graham, a veteran of the Texas punk and pop scenes and craggy brooder extraordinaire. The Great Battle starts out slow and gruff and stays that way, but I expected as much: Graham has always romanced his darker side, and his own press agent describes The Great Battle as an exploration of “the utter bone-weariness of life in general.” Not being one who puts much truck in utter bone-weariness, I was prepared to dismiss this album, and I almost did, at least until Graham sang this line:
“Everyone says put one foot in front of the other / Of course the irony is that’s the only way feet work / What luck.”

It’s a great line, one made all the better by Graham’s tired and cynical rasp. (In regards to the voice, the same press agent sez we’re not supposed to invoke Tom Waits or train wrecks, but some things you can’t avoid: Graham sounds like Tom Waits in a train wreck.) The snippet comes on the album’s seventh track, “Robot Moving;” after hearing it, I gave the entire album a closer listen. There are several gems on board, including “The Majesty of Love” and “World So Full.” Graham is a gifted writer, and honest. His world is a bleak and dreary one, but it never descends into nihilism and it is graced with a thin lining of hope. (Witness the penultimate line on the album: “I am in love, I’m still in love, with a world so full.”) Bleak and dreary and somehow hopeful: if that sounds like your life, you may have found your muse in Jon Dee Graham.

08-19-04:

News 8 Austin: “Sans the anger”
“I’m still capable of every bit as much vitriol as I ever was. But it is being balanced. Perhaps it’s the great battle between the fact [that] there’s a lot in my life that I really, really like right now and that there's a lot of stuff that’s like having my skin taken off with a teaspoon.”
Click here to read the article.

08-09-04:

“The last time I played El Paso”
Jon Dee is on the cover of the Austin American Statesman’s XL entertainment section this week. Richard Skanse says in the lengthy feature article that The Great Battle is “the best record of [Jon Dee’s] career.” That’s really saying something...
Click here to read the article.

Reviews of The Great Battle
Austin Chronicle
High Bias

07-27-04:

“The opening act was a revelation”
Seattle Times music critic Patrick MacDonald recently caught John Hiatt’s show in Seattle at the Woodland Park Zoo and was, of course, happy that he did. What he wasn‘t expecting was that Hiatt‘s opening act, Jon Dee Graham, would also blow him away.
Click here to read the live review.

04-27-04:

The Great Battle arrives August 10!
Jon Dee Graham is fine tuning his new album The Great Battle, getting ready for a release date on August 10. Hitting the road soon with the new material, Jon Dee will be back home in time for a record release party at the Continental Club in Austin, TX.
Click here for Jon Dee tour dates.