REVIEW: Billy Droze — Waiting the Storm (LP)

Billy Droze isn’t letting anything get in the way of his mission to express on every level in 2021, and his new album Waiting out the Storm proves as much. No matter where we look in this track list, there’s a sense of determination behind his words that is as unmistakable as it is easy for the audience to connect with in some form or another. Melodies bear the weight of emotion in ways words never could in “Woman of My Life” and “How I Tell You Goodbye” while the opposite might be true of “She’s Still Here” and “Miss Me Anymore,” but in every case, Droze’s heart is always on his sleeve.

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/BillyDroze

Waiting out the Storm has a lot of rhythm to write home about this spring, and this isn’t limited to the explosive bluegrass gallop many have come to associate with the genre’s best tracks. Slow and simmering grooves grow into something much darker and harder to resist in the aforementioned “How I Tell You Goodbye” much as “Bring on the Wind” takes a frustrated step towards the climactic release we all want to hear with each verse Droze sings. His stories are never told through words alone, but through the actual backdrop he constructs with the beats behind them.

The lead vocal we get out of Billy Droze in Waiting out the Storm is utterly fantastic, particularly in songs like “Small Town Mystery,” the title cut and “Night Birds,” and I for one think he’s never really got the attention he deserves with regards to this aspect of his sound. He’s a tremendously gifted singer who stands up to Sonya Isaacs in “All You Gotta Do is Listen” epically well (which isn’t an easy feat by any means at all), and he isn’t shying away from showing us what he can do with his voice in this LP.

You can definitely pick up on some of the gospel influences in Droze’s style of play in “Here We Are,” “Anywhere the Wind Might Blow” and “Dreamer’s Melody,” despite the subtly of the aesthetics in each of these three songs. Clandestine features, as muted as they can be in Waiting out the Storm are as much a piece of the puzzle this singer/songwriter has created for our pleasure with his most recent studio work, and this is evidenced by the way these detailed compositions billow over with vitality in every opportunity they’re given.

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Waiting-out-the-Storm/dp/B0866CGR3P

There are a lot of exciting acts in the bluegrass genre right now, with artists like The Kody Norris Show, Barry Abernathy and Jerry Salley immediately coming to mind as hot players to watch in 2021, but as amazing as the collective talent pool is, no one that I’ve recently heard is quite like Billy Droze. Droze delivers a once in a lifetime selection of ballads and bucolic swing tunes in Waiting out the Storm that I was swept away by from the beginning, and for some (myself included), he could well be the most important bluegrass artists you need to monitor at the moment.

Colin Jordan