New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Jack�s first album in 7 years after departing Big Machine and what �should� follow #1�s on Country radio and an ACM win for Best New Male Vocalist in 2008 . Emerging seven years later on Rounder Records, he�s made a hand shake deal with himself - �Don�t write a song/That you wouldn�t sing.� Midnight Motel is a Texas-tinged �guided meditation� through liquor-fueled melancholy. It�s good. It�s pure but messy. It�s a night at the bar with Jack on stage � songs, shots, spoken riffs and all. He lets his audience pick their poison because we're all just drinking alone anyway. His job is to just make it sound a little better� �Ingram�s is a singular voice, an artist adept at sharing the broader insights that reflect on the minutiae of everyday experience,� says writer Lee Zimmerman in a recent review. �These rough-hewn arrangements and his sturdy, though solitary, expression are so consistently compelling.� The review concludes, �In a very real sense then, this is Ingram�s most authentic effort to date, and not surprisingly, it�s also his best.�
Jack Ingram�s the �underdog� who�s had too much success to be called an underdog. When asked �what was up with the seven year disappearance?� his self-inflicted scars show up. It�s the stuff of great stories�
�I needed time. I left Big Machine feeling I�d done good work, it was 90% there, but not 100%. If you want to connect with an audience, you have to take a look at why you�re not connecting.�
�If you like a song you�re doing, but it�s not giving you an extreme emotion, performing it is fake. Whenever I�d write a great song � a song I�d be proud to play for my heroes � I�d take it hard that it didn�t connect to a mainstream audience. I used to think it was on me - I had to work harder to make everyone �get it�. Now I know that my sensibilities, and what I�m interested, in just doesn�t go hand in hand with the mainstream. The good news is, it trained me to be a showman and I built a reputation of working hard. But part of that is the insecurity of �I�m not my heroes��this album is where I stopped that. I got to a place where MY music finally speaks to ME.
Seven years taking stock, playing 100 shows a year, calling bullshit on myself.�
�Music isn�t a puzzle you put together because the pieces fit and it rhymes� at a certain point I realized the kind of music I listen to and want to play isn�t the music I was recording. Now, I can finish the songs as strong as I start them. The best part about doing it for yourself, by yourself, is you don�t have to throw anything away. It turns out your own voice is �right��then you just go and figure out who else agrees w you.�
