Jake Gray knows how to defy the odds.

The Knoxville, Tennessee singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist witnessed that feat firsthand from his brother and penned a song about it.

“When I wrote ‘Rode Hard,’ it comes from a saying, ‘Rode and put away wet.’ It was a saying back on the farm, and I wrote that song about my brother. And when I wrote it, I thought, ‘This is gonna be the title track,’” said Gray about the song from his latest Americana album of the same name.

“Some of those lines are right out of his life, so when I go, ‘Let me tell you about a tale / Of a man whose life didn’t go so well.’ That’s how that track opens up.”

Throughout “Rode Hard,” Gray highlights how his brother overcame divorce, past mistakes and health challenges to emerge as a stronger and wiser person on the other side.

Alongside determined acoustic guitar, violin and drums, Gray sings, “He finally thinks he’s made enough mistakes / But he’s come a long, long, long way / So I ask him what’s he gonna do / He says take some time, forget my pride and switch out my point of view.”

“I did try to leave [the song] on a positive note on the bridge and the outro, ‘It doesn’t matter what’s gone before / Just pick yourself right off that floor’ and then off you go. You don’t have to be married to what happened to you before,” he said.

“He does like [the song], and he recognized himself straightaway. Last year, he had open heart surgery, which is a culmination of a lifetime of bad choices of how [he was] treating [his] body. He survived that, and then a few months later, he had acute pancreatitis. He quit drinking, and he works out like an animal; he’s still working to get his head right.”

Drinks and Castles

Inside a similar headspace, Gray walks listeners through a series of life experiences related to change, loss and connection on Rode Hard.

The album’s 11 tracks explore those circumstances in homes, bars, cafes, cellars, small towns and castles. They also come to life against a backdrop of storied lyrics and robust country instrumentation filled with elements of folk and rock.

“I try to tell people that everybody’s got their own story, everybody’s got their idioms—the things that you say, your little catchphrases, or your little puns that you like,” said Gray, who grew up in Big Rapids, Michigan. “If you got a little jokey joke … you can take your catchphrase and set it to music.”

One of those Rode Hard catchphrases includes the carefree opener, “I’ll Quit Drinkin’,” which spotlights unwinding after a long day and throwing ‘em back with friends.

Backed by easygoing acoustic guitar, piano and violin, Gray sings, “Now keep them coming nice and cold / Cuz I don’t wanna go home / No, no, no, no.”

“It’s a literal quote from one of my friends. We were all over at [a friend’s] house having dinner, and a lot of times, the guitars would come out, and we’d be messing around,” he said.

“My friend has never been afraid of a beer and another friend of ours was giving him some shit about how much beer he drinks. He said, ‘I’ll quit drinkin’,’ and then he paused and said, ‘When they run out of beer.’ I was like, ‘That’s a country song right there.’”

Outside of drinking with friends, Gray provides a fun country spin on an infectious cover of Poison’s 1986 hit, “Talk Dirty to Me.”

Eager acoustic guitar, violin, piano, upright bass and drums seamlessly convert the track from glam rock to an Americana jam as he sings, “‘Cause baby we’ll be / At the drive-in / In the old man’s Ford / Behind the bushes / ‘Til I’m screamin’ for more / Down the basement / Lock the cellar door / And baby / Talk dirty to me.”

“I was at an open mic night and I was just screwing around. I didn’t bring my guitar, I just brought my mandolin, so I played ‘Talk Dirty to Me’ on the mandolin. Some guy at the bar turns around and goes, ‘That’s a great song!’ “ said Gray, who’s inspired by James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, the Eagles and Journey guitarist Neil Schon.

“I was like, ‘We’re going to cover this [one]!’ When I played it on the mandolin, people wouldn’t recognize it until I hit the chorus, and they would go, ‘Oh my god!’ After that, I thought, ‘We’re gonna go in the studio and go old-timey country with it.’”

After reimagining “Talk Dirty to Me,” Gray takes a pun-filled approach on “Come Duet With Me,” a subtly humorous, but romantic ode to intimacy featuring Knoxville singer-songwriter Cacye Stoops.

Surrounded by bold electric guitar and baritone saxophone, Gray sings, “I hope that you’ll like my singing / But together we’ll weave / And we’ll duet together / Yeah, in sweet harmony.”

“I was just being funny with that one; I love my puns and my play on words. There’s a guy who hosts a lot of open mics where I go and test out this stuff, and he goes, ‘You are the king of the double entendre,’” he said.

“I knew Cacye just from running around music circles here in Knoxville. I had not done duets or brought other people on to do vocals on any of my prior albums. But this time, it was a conscious decision to bring in specifically a female voice on some of these songs.”

Finally, Gray shifts from comedy to tragedy on the melancholic closer, “Last Leap of Faith,” which recounts a ghostly tale of a woman who’s forbidden by her father to love another. In response, she jumps from the castle and plunges to her death in the sea below.

Somber acoustic guitar, slide guitar, violin and drums echo “Faith’s” despair as Gray sings, “Now, you can still hear her call to him / Her voice still carries upon the wind / The passing years have brought her no relief / She still sings in the key of grief.”

“The elements of how this happened: My daughter’s name is Faith and there’s a game called Assassin’s Creed. There’s a move in there called the ‘leap of faith’ where you jump off a tower and what happens is you always land in a bale of hay or whatever,” he said.

“I was thinking about that ‘leap of faith’ and wondered, ‘What if it’s a metaphorical leap of faith? What if it was a tragedy? What if the faith was a person? And the last leap of faith takes that story in a dark direction?’ I was also experimenting with writing a song that’s a story.”

Rode Hard and Beyond

As part of that storied approach, Gray started writing the 11 tracks for his fifth album, Rode Hard, in 2020. At the time, he wasn’t able to tour and perform live in support of Near the Middle of Nowhere due to the pandemic.

“What I did was release ‘Last Leap of Faith’ in [December] 2021 as a single and ‘Come Duet With Me’ in April 2022 as a single,” said Gray, who plays acoustic guitar, mandolin and bass on the album.

“I also released ‘Talk Dirty to Me’ as a single, but that was when I got to the point where I said, ‘OK, now we have an album to put together.’”

With a new album in mind, Gray partnered with Knoxville producer-engineer Miah Lajeunesse to record the tracks at The Sound Lair. They started with scratch vocal and guitar tracks and added drums, bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, backing vocals and lead vocals.

“And then for any given song, I think about what I’m shooting for in terms of texture and feel,” Gray said. “For this album, I used more of the studio and brought in all kinds of different musicians. Miah said, ‘It’s clearly your best album, and it sounds like you have a real band.’”

To elevate Rode Hard’s sound, Gray collaborated with a talented team of musicians, including Josh Van Wey (piano, keys), Summer Fabus (violin), Sarah Jean Cammisano (violin), Ryan Dunaway (violin), Will Ross (upright bass), Michael Bates (guitar), Justin Schrimpsher (lap steel), Spencer Cassidy (saxophone), wife Jamie Riffel Gray (drums) and Stoops (vocals).

“Like for ‘Come Duet With Me,’ I had never had a saxophone player, but I was like, ‘This song needs a baritone sax; I can hear it in my head.’ I started using my network to try to find somebody—Spencer Cassidy—who plays baritone sax,” Gray said.

“It’s the only song that baritone sax shows up on, and it might be the very last time we use saxophone, but for that song, I knew it was going to be perfect. And then there are certain songs I knew Will Ross, who plays upright bass, would add the feel and the sound of an upright versus an electric bass on ‘Last Leap of Faith,’ ‘Dare to Be Great’ and ‘Talk Dirty to Me.’”

While Rode Hard continues to make its impact on the world, Gray is focused on writing new songs for his next album, which will have more of a rock-inspired sound.

“Now, I’ve settled on my vision for this next album, and the working title will probably be Jake’s Rock Album—sort of like Metallica’s black album. If Lynyrd Skynyrd had used a violinist, then that’s what I’m shooting for,” he said.

“As I finish this, I’m already gonna have my 12-song list of what’s gonna get recorded in the studio. I envision this is gonna be a lot faster because I’m going to record the scratch tracks at home and send them to Miah [Lajeunesse].”