J.R. Carroll has zero interest in being hailed as country music’s next savior. Although his debut album, Dark Cloud, released on Friday after five years of singles and short EPs, may land him there against his will.
“I’m only doing things that I really want to do,” Carroll tells Rolling Stone. “I’m not actively trying to market myself to a wider audience. I am happy where I’m at. I’m respected by the people who I wanted to be respected by when I started this. If it grows, that’s great, and I will be a good steward of whatever becomes of that, but I already have a job that keeps me busy all year.”
That particular job for Carroll is playing keyboard in the band fronted by his long-time friend — and fellow Oologah, Oklahoma, native — Zach Bryan.
Over the past 18 months, when not touring with Bryan, Carroll pieced together Dark Cloud at Teegarden Studios in Tulsa, recording nine original songs and a gospel hymn — “In the Garden,” a nod to Carroll’s upbringing as the son of a Pentecostal preacher — to round out the record.
The result is a stripped-down country album filled with ultra-personal lyrics that the 25-year-old Carroll has been writing for six years, since he traded in the religious life of his upbringing for the bars, arenas, and stadiums that he plays in now.
“I spent the last year and a half recording this album in breaks from touring when my mental health allowed me to actually leave the couch,” he says. “I wrote the first song on the record when I was 21, just starting to play bars and get my heart broken. And I wrote the last original song on the album the day before I proposed to my wife.
“I made it as a kind of debrief to the world on how my life has been since I started traveling around, and what I’ve been going through and experiencing,” he continues. “I try to show the transition from thinking of home as a place to thinking of home as a person — and the journey it took me to get there.”
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That mindset shines through on “Hometown Hero,” already released as a single. The steel-heavy honky-tonk sound and two-four beat provides the canvas for Carroll to paint a picture of a lonely night at home, culminating in the chorus of: “I don’t need any sympathy/I don’t want anything but wine/She may be gone, but she won’t forget me/because heroes don’t die/Lord knows I’ve tried, but love just won’t let me.”
Carroll has been married to his wife, Felicia, for a little more than a year, and the two have a house in Tulsa and a Pug named Bella. Felicia and Bella provide a comfort zone for the reclusive Carroll; he wrote “Hometown Hero” when Felicia had to travel for work.
“I was the one left alone at home for a change,” he says. “I thought about going out to the Iron Horse in Oologah, but it was a Wednesday, and I thought about how depressing that would be to return from playing stadiums just to go sit in an empty bar and miss my wife. So, I made up a story that kinda reminded me of that vision I saw in my head.”
The entirety of the album is a self-exploration for Carroll. It’s evident in “Shame” and “How to Be Okay,” both songs capable of tying a listener’s heart into knots, not so much with pain but with the sort of anxiety and stress that a reluctant road warrior can never really shake.
Carroll got his start in Oklahoma’s Red Dirt scene. His first-ever show was a bar gig with fellow Oklahoman Wyatt Flores when neither artist had made a name for themselves (or joined a band with one who had). Until 2022, when Bryan’s career took off and he called Carroll and asked him to join his touring band, Carroll was on the same emo-country path as Flores, writing and playing songs to keep his own angst and insecurities at bay. He still writes for those reasons, but a J.R. Carroll solo concert is a rare occurrence. He has played a few big festivals — the Windy City Smokeout in 2023 and the most recent Two-Step Inn — and he headlined a four-band New Year’s Eve bill that included Kaitlin Butts and Nolan Taylor a year ago at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa. Carroll also filled in as Bryan’s opener for two nights last month in Sacramento when Levi Turner had to miss the shows for the birth of his child. Carroll went viral for covering Taylor Swift’s “Mean” at the shows.
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But those are exceptions to his homebody lifestyle, and he does not see that changing — much.
He plans to tour in support of Dark Cloud in the spring when Bryan’s tour concludes, and he’ll return to Cain’s on Dec. 30 to open a sold-out show for Flores. But when Carroll isn’t touring with Bryan, he’d rather stay home than force a gig for himself.
“I don’t search it out,” he says. “I know it’s kind of stupid because it’s my entire job, but I don’t really love touring. I’m such a homebody, and now I’m married — and I have a wife who I really love, and really love being with. So it’s even harder to get me out the door.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose third book, Red Dirt Unplugged, is set for release on December 13, 2024, via Back Lounge Publishing, and available for pre-order.
