Cletus, the fifth full-length album from Boise, Idaho-based Jonathan Warren & The Billy Goats, is about finding the beauty that hides beneath the pain, finding hope within the struggle, and light in the darkness. Written and recorded during an on-again/off-again relationship, front man Jonathan Warren was in, Cletus serves as a record that encapsulates themes of love, loss, redemption, and hope; topics that will remain as relevant tomorrow as they were yesterday.
Another shadow looming over the record was the loss of Billy Kaiser, the band’s original bass player -and the namesake of the band – . Billy committed suicide in December of 2017. The loss was devastating to the Billygoats as well the Boise music community and had a profound effect on the album.
The result is a record that contains timeless sounds and themes about not settling, reaching for your vision of beauty, and to not being afraid to get your hand slapped. Fans of The Avett Brothers, Langhorne Slim, Josh Ritter, and Tom Waits will find something in the record they will relate to. And, for anyone that hasn’t seen the band in person yet, don’t worry, Cletus captures The Billygoats’ live sound perfectly.
Comprised of Jonathan Warren (guitar, upright bass, vocals), David Henry (cello, guitar, vocals), and newcomer Stephen Morningstar (banjo, guitar, vocals), Cletus delivers on the sound the Billygoats have dubbed “progressive psychobilly folk-grass.”
Today Glide is excited to premiere the new video for “Stayed Too Long”, one of the standout track on Cletus. The dark tone of the music video is juxtaposed by a fairly upbeat acoustically strummed guitar, and things soon take an even darker turn as the video’s main character engages in some dirty evil deeds. The band’s banjo-driven gothic folk makes a surprisingly fitting soundtrack for this unfortunate tale of love gone awry. If anything, listeners might not expect to hear this style of music playing over such a sequence of events, which adds a layer of creepy black humor to the whole thing. But in the end the song climaxes with eerie harmonies right at the point of a dramatic twist, signaling that Jonathan Warren & The Billy Goats are as adept at creating dramatic moods with their folk music as they are with haunting lyrical narratives.
Jonathan Warren reflects on the meaning behind the song:
“‘Stayed Too Long’ is a glimpse into a relationship gone bad and the recognition of when it is time to leave. I gave the director James Hansen complete artistic freedom to direct the video and he further explored the dark places unhealthy relationships can travel too when one ‘stays too long.'”
WATCH:
For more music and info visit jonathanwarrenmusic.com.
