As a proficient songwriter, Jeremy Porter brings compelling characters to life.
His characters range from dogs and kids to Shakespearean sidekicks and ranch hands, and together they face regrets, challenges, and hard lessons in different situations.
They’re prominently featured throughout the 12 tracks on Sell Their Souls, Porter’s latest multigenre album with The Tucos.
“It wasn’t really intentional,” said Porter, who’s based in Plymouth, Michigan. “I think you just summed up all the different things that I tend to write songs about. Regret is a constant theme, and it seems in my lyrics that I keep coming back to that.”
To create relatable protagonists, Porter draws inspiration from a variety of TV shows and films, including Wes Anderson movies, neo-Western dramas, and true-crime documentaries.
“I get a lot of inspiration from that,” Porter said. “If I hear somebody say something on the screen that catches my ear, I’ll put it right into my phone, and I’ll build a song around it.”
But his storied lyrics are only part of the equation for Sell Their Souls. The turbocharged, fearless instrumentation from Porter (guitar, vocals, piano, lap steel) and Tucos bandmates Gabriel Doman (drums, vocals, percussion, piano, guitar) and Jake Reilly (bass, vocals) provides the other crucial portion. (The band’s current live drummer is Troy Toma.)
“This is a bit of a heavier record for us, and it’s a bit more rock than we usually do,” said Porter, who released the album via GTG Records. “I always like albums like The Who’s The Who Sell Out. I wanted [the album’s title] to be like that, like a news headline—Jeremy Porter and The Tucos Sell Their Souls—that’s a sentence.”
I recently spoke with Porter ahead of an October 10 album release show at Parts and Labor Bar in Melvindale.
