08 The Way Things Ought To Be

The Way Things Ought To Be

The gap between how things are and how they ought to be is the oldest engine in country music, and it happens to be the same gap the Caravan has been picking at since 2014. Here it gets three minutes and a melody instead of three hours and a guest.

A Wells original, like everything on this record bar one.

Stormy — John B. Wells on vocals and guitar.

Long before the Caravan, the voice that carries the broadcast was doing something else with itself. Stormy is a country rock record written and sung by John B. Wells — he wrote every song on it but one, and the arrangements are the work of someone who has spent a career listening to how sound is put together.

It is worth remembering what that career actually was. This is the man whose voice carried Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter and F-22 Raptor projects, national film trailers and museum exhibits — work that collected Emmy, Clio and Marconi awards. A composer, musician, writer, actor, martial arts instructor and aviator, described on his own site as a Renaissance man who savours the pursuit of knowledge from the arcane to the esoteric. The record is one more room in that house.

Every song is a Wells original except “You Don't Bring Me Flowers.” The album button adds all fifteen downloads to your cart at the single-track price; buy any one of them on its own instead if you would rather.