Eric Brace and I go back a ways — I think to about 2001 when I reviewed an Americana compilation that included a track by his Washington, D.C. band Last Train Home. I helped bring him and his longtime musical partner Peter Cooper to a house concert in my hometown here in Oregon in the late Oughts. My attention to his musical doings has been spotty in the past few years, but I welcome this chance to catch up on his latest.
Eric and Thomm Jutz have been making music together for 10 years now, first as a trio with Peter Cooper and as a duo since Peter’s untimely death in 2022. Circle and Square is their second record together.
Cooper remains a presence a little more than three years later. The emotional center of Circle and Square is Eric’s exploration of grief and memory “Nothing Hurts.” It’s as touching as anything he’s ever written, a simple shuffling folk song, sung by Eric solo as he and Thomm play their separate acoustic guitars, and it seems to me that his craggy baritone wobbles a bit on the last verse. My own heart may have wobbled a bit when I first listened to it. This one goes on my playlist of favorite songs along with Eric’s tribute to the first moon landing, “Tranquility Base.”
Peter’s also present in another song, the plaintive “Life Of The Mind” which the three co-wrote, a softly lilting waltz with lyrics that look at what a life means toward its end. Sung as a duet, Eric on the verses and Thomm joining on the refrain, their two guitars winding their tunes around each other.
The duo is joined on some of the rest of the 10 tracks by Mark Fain on bass, Lynn Williams on drums and Finn Goodwin-Bain on piano. An especially pretty example is “Fontana Dam,” a gently sad look at the destructive legacy of the TVA dams on Appalachian families and communities. The work of other artists inspired three of the songs: “Thomas Hart Benton,” (by Thomm and Shawn Camp) about his final mural depicting the roots of country music; “Diego In Detroit” about Diego Rivera’s murals in the motor city; and “Beckmann In The Frame,” on Max Beckmann’s paintings in The Hague.
Also of note are the opening track “10 To 4,” a gentler and less sad song about the life of a traveling troubador, missing loved ones in another time zone; and “On The Back Of A Horse,” inspired by the history of the circuit riding librarians in eastern Kentucky. Circle and Square is full of gentle but sturdy songs about the human condition and the important role art of all kinds plays in the lives of us all. A good record for now.
(Red Beet Records, 2026)
