Eight years ago, “Drinking Problem” had dropped seemingly out of nowhere and the smooth vocal trio Midland were riding a growing wave of a country music resurgence. One night around that same time, I was on the patio of Justine’s French brasserie in Austin, Texas, talking with one of my favorite photographers, Linda Beecroft, when a very wild-eyed and heated Mark Wystrach, Midland’s singer, ran up saying he needed to talk to me immediately. Back then I wasn’t yet a full-time musician, nor had I even started my photo journey, but this night helped change all that.
“JT!” he fumed. “They fucking threw me out of the White Horse for some bullshit and I’m about to go back there and bust the door guy’s head.”
I walked Mark over to the bar and ordered us a round of tequila shooters and beers, and I told him, “No, you’re not. You’re gonna get one shot in and then four guys are going to break your legs.” It was a different time in the underground honky-tonk scene of Austin. “You’re gonna go on tour and he’s gonna work the door,” I continued, “but you ain’t going anywhere with a cracked jaw.”
We sat at that bar until close and drank more tequila. We talked Marty Robbins, Gary Stewart, surfing, and the joys of travel until we were cross-eyed. The next morning, Wystrach called me. He declared we were now friends and that wherever Midland goes, so would I.
Which is how I found myself in Copenhagen, Denmark, on a late August day in 2025. Mark and his core bandmates, Jess Carson and Cameron Duddy, have just burned through a sold-out Midland show at the Copenhagen club Vega. I’m on the road with the group, opening gigs — I’m releasing my new album Dove on Sept. 26 — but also capturing all the mayhem with my camera for Rolling Stone. After the show, we pile out of the venue into the rain and find the nearest glowing pub.
Immediately, a bleary-eyed Brit on holiday starts grabbing at Mark’s and my cowboy hats when we walk in the door. Somebody’s now in a headlock, and there’s a surge of packed bodies moving in a swelling tide of shirt-tugging and shouting. One guy is lifted off his feet and tossed out into the rain — the owner of the pub brings us a crate of beers because his football team won a qualifying game and he’s not going to let some kid ruin his celebration. There is cheering and hugs and then, just like that, there is calm. The band and crew of 15 pile in and we sit with locals, bouncing around candlelit tables to talk politics, painters, and songwriters. Midland’s European tour is officially in full swing.
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Each night the band whips the crowd into a frenzy with their cool, Western romantic harmonies and dance-hall sing-alongs. Mark croons and strums campfire acoustic. Jess doubles harmony and leads while Cameron lays on high-tenor smooth bass to create that buttery Nineties country sound. Then there’s Luke Cutchen, who wrangles lead guitar while Phillip Sterk makes them cry with his pedal steel. John Wood mans the kit; Jeff Adamczyk sprinkles stars above on keys.
Midland are good to their audience, a passionate base known as “Midlanderos.” I watch the band unfailingly take time for photos or to listen to a personal sentiment from a fan, even after playing two-hour gigs and with loud-out approaching.
Soon, our wild pack of honky-tonkers are set loose into the bowels of the town in search of the strangest bars we can find. Each night, the lights come on and the bus call pings. We shuffle onboard as the diesel engine rumbles. The band is wrapped up in a heated dice game. Techno is blasting in the bus galley. The crew is dancing and there is a pile of three different kinds of currency on the table, while voices shout and beer bottles jingle as the bus rolls through the ancient Denmark night headed for Germany.
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Our Polish bus driver, Konrad, who only listens to black metal, can’t believe the atmosphere: “You guys are fucking crazy, man.”
In Hamburg, it’s more of the same. The venue is in the historic red-light district known as the Reeperbahn and the sold-out crowd reaches for the band as Midland take a bow to “Sweet Caroline,” their walk-off song. Some in the crowd wave American flags.
Bus call is 1 a.m. and we all stand in amazement against a graffiti-decorated wall, smoking and watching ballroom dancers waltz beneath crystal chandeliers on a large first-floor apartment across the way. The sound of laughter and clinking glass pours out of the windows and onto the streets. Moments like this, when a veil of the world is lifted to offer a glimpse of something foreign and timeless, cement memories and strengthen friendships.
And then we’re off to Amsterdam, where the guys are on a tireless hunt to find a sauna before their show at the Paradiso. (Midland sure love to sauna.) Every venue on this tour is an historic jewel from some two to five hundred years ago, and the Paradiso is adorned with ornate crown molding, white pillars, and arched balconies. The acoustics are impeccable.
In juxtaposition to the stately auditorium, the crowd is the loudest and wildest here, pounding on the stage and chanting, “We want more!” The response gives Mark a spiritual and physical charge and he offers the crowd one more song. But the mics have long since been turned off, so he sings a verse and chorus unplugged to the hushed audience.
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We drive overnight and catch a 6 a.m. ferry across the English Channel and toast a morning Guinness as the white Cliffs of Dover come into view. It’s time for the Roundhouse in London, the crown jewel of the tour. This is the last show I’ll play before heading back to the States to join up with Hayes Carll, and we all deliver. It’s euphoric.
The show concludes and sentimental hugs break out backstage before the bus rolls on to Manchester and Midland’s next adventure. I walk out into the quiet London streets alone, smiling to myself and trying to remember exactly what the hell just happened.