By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Justin Payne found it hard to deal with the unrelenting stream of bad news blaring out at him from the media.
As a singer-songwriter, influenced by Woody Guthrie, those concerns about gun violence, the treatment of immigrants of all ages, corporate control of media and politics, income inequality, and the rise of white supremacy found their way into his songs. He’d sing them on stage at venues to the north, east, west and south of his Bowling Green base. Yet no matter how hard the content, song delivered with his voice and acoustic background always had a tendency to sound pretty, and soft. “It could be too easily tuned out.”
After the set he may ask someone in the audience: What did you think about the song about kids in cages?
Too often the reply would be: What song was that?
So Payne has plugged in and cranked up the volume.
“This is my brick through the window. This is the price people pay when they come to hear me play.”
He has “a bleeding heart,” Payne said. “That’s where I stand on things.”
And he’s not willing anymore to smooth that over. “I’m going to say what I need to say. I need to shake it up a little bit, maybe get a little visceral, maybe get in people faces more with the actual raw power of the sound. “
So when his louder, more rock edged version of Justin Payne & Co. played recently at Firefly Nights, he had some listeners come up and complain. His set was too loud, nothing like the CD.
Local listeners have another chance to hear Payne’s new sound tonight (Friday, Aug. 23) at Howard’s Club H in downtown Bowling Green. Payne & Co. headlines a four-band show that starts at 8 p.m. with Moths in the Attic and featuring Dirty Fuss from Nashville, and Static Falls from Cincinnati, bands Payne has paired up with on the road.
Payne will also open up the Black Swamp Arts Festival with a Main Stage show at 5 p.m. Friday Sept. 6.
That show feels to the musician like he’s come full circle. Back in 2005, he appeared as a guest violinist with Tony Papa’s Huge World Project when it opened the festival. Now just as he is planning to move to Nashville to try out that scene, he’s back in the opening spot, now brandishing an electric guitar.
The violin, though, is what brought Payne to town. With the encouragement of his grandparents, he had started playing violin at age 4. He became good enough to sub in orchestras around the region. Then he got pulled away by his need to write songs.
He’d also started playing electric guitar at 12, enamored of heavy metal, he was tough on strings. He moved away from that sound, but now that youthful clamor is back. “That’s just what I am,” he said. “I just want to be more true to myself.”
He said he’s also working on dealing with his own personal issues with anger management and being bipolar. The music is a way, though maybe not the easiest way, to deal with it.
He finds himself in “a weird spot” on the music scene. “I can’t hang with the young cats and their new bands, and I’m not part of the old guard.”
Payne is disappointed that so many of his contemporaries have not commented on what’s going on in the world. “They’ve left it to the pundits.”
Payne wants his voice heard. Last December he released the single “Kinder Cages,” about the detention of children at the border. Any money generated by sales of the single go to RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services).
At the Black Swamp fest he will release the single “Season of Loss.”
He was aiming to put out another EP, but “that collection exploded,” and he has about 20 ready to record. That will take a while.
He’s hoping to put his songwriting skills to good use in Nashville. He also plans to focus more on his guitar playing, bringing the string instrumentalist side of him more to the fore. Through performing in the city he already has some strong contacts, including Zach Wilson, who toured with him back in 2017. He’s looking forward to working with bands other than his own, something he’s been doing recently. And he’s already lined up a bass player and drummer for another edition of Justin Payne & Co. He’ll be breathing new life into his songs, he said. “This is a new chapter.”
