Wait Till I Get Over, the first solo album from established bandleader Durand Jones, sets aside the lush Disco-Soul of usual backing band The Indications and finds Jones steeped instead in his deep delta upbringing. The result is a stripped-down and deeply personal portrait of his evolution from son of the unincorporated hamlet of Hilliaryville, LA to worldly Soul powerhouse. We begin as he did, in his Mississippi River hometown, a place founded by the reparations of eight former slaves. Drawn in, his grandmother’s voice sets the scene for Jones’ personal history to unfurl for us, then lead single “Lord Have Mercy” picks up with grit and Gospel where his grandmother leaves off.
As Jones explains to Glide Magazine, “The interlude ends with my Grandmother telling us how she felt about Hillaryville back in the day. Hillaryville is no longer a sanctuary town or ‘place you’d most want to live’. Most people in my generation and younger dream of escaping a place like Hillaryville. And for many the dream never becomes something more. Life can find a way to keep you there if you will let it. I wanted to express this thought through sound in a raw, wild and raucous way. A build of a groove that feels like it is driving through a muddy swamp. Trapped.”
Follow-up song, “Sadie” is a Retro-Soul lament of infidelity, soon after we reach the title track, one that had been waiting for its moment. “That song’s been in my head for the last ten years,” says Jones, “and it sat there because I didn’t know how to record it.” Eventually Jones had his answer in unlocking how to record with his voice filling the room from all sides. He set the mic and moved around it until the coral sections of the room were covered from which the refrain, “I’ll hitch on my wings, and then I’ll try the air,” lifts effortlessly.
Jones soars again in the deeply personal proclamation “That Feeling.” “This is the first breakup song I’ve ever written, and the only love song I’ve written for another man,” Jones explains, and the record moves further through Jones realizing he’s moved beyond the kid trying to separate himself from his upbringing. “Through this process I’ve come to learn that I am a proud descendent of Longshoremen on the river, and sugarcane and rice farmers on the land – all in the deep rural south of Louisiana. I am a proud son of Hillaryville and I am proud to be a part of its legacy. This is my story.”
Jones’ story is being heard all over by listeners of Radio Milwaukee, Lightning 100, KXT, WDST, The SoCal Sound and many more.
