***Jerry David DeCicca is songwriter and producer. He makes his living as a vocational rehabilitation provider for special education students and adults. He’s produced albums for Ed Askew (Tin Angel Records), Bob Martin and Ralph White (Worried Songs), Will Beeley (Tompkins Square), Chris Gantry (Drag City), Larry Jon Wilson (1965 Records / Drag City) and worked on reissue projects for Numero Group. Collaborators on his DIY solo albums include David Hidalgo, Kelley Deal, Augie Meyers, Jeff Parker, Spooner Oldham, Will Oldham, and many others. He lives in the rural town of Bulverde, TX with his two dogs, three cats, five toads, and wife. His previous band, The Black Swans, released 5 albums and toured for 10 years. Cardiac Country features: JDD (acoustic & electric guitar/vocals), BJ Cole (pedal steel), Don Cento (electric guitar & mixing), Armando Aussenac (drums), Jorge Palomo (bass), Eric Casillas (percussion) Eve Searls (backing vocals), Trevor Nealon (organ/piano), Mason Hankamer (tuba).
"I wrote and recorded Cardiac Country, my 6th solo album, just a few months before I received a diagnosis that led to open heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic to replace my leaky aortic valve. At the time, I thought I was in the best shape of my life. Only the last song, “Old Hat,” was written and recorded with the knowledge of my health issue. I tracked it, solo acoustic, two weeks before my operation, just in case… You can hear me running out of air.
I listen to these songs now and try to make sense of what my body was telling my pen and guitar, dissecting the information my brain didn’t yet know.
In the opener, “Long Distance Runner,” inspired by Haruki Murakami with a nod to the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain,” I sing “Your heart remains healthy / for what lies ahead” in the final verse. I hear it not as ironic, but more as an affirmation that I was going to be ok. Other songs, like “Unlit Road” and “My Friend” I sound, quite literally, heart-broken from losing two close friends, one to alcohol and the other to a misunderstanding that snowballed into disrepair. “Mourning Locket” imagines my own hair in the antiquated jewelry, kept by my loved one as a souvenir after I pass. “Good Ghosts,” my favorite song on the album, sits me down on my couch, getting drunk, while listening to records by dead musicians, soaking in their wisdom and heartache, side after side, until bedtime. “Frozen Hearts” is a breezy, Tom T. Hall-ish morality song about the emptiness of virtue signaling and “Where Did My Empathy Go?” chugs through some self-hating, animal-loving vignettes, rhetorically asking myself why I eat meat. “Dripping Man” is about crying all the time (which is why there’s a tuba solo), something I’ve increased in recent years and have now taken to a whole new level. In the months preceding my surgery, I would burst into tears at the grocery, the dentist, the post office, wherever and whenever someone asked me how I was doing. I still cry almost daily, which seems to be “normal” according to other members of my Aortic Valve Facebook support group. Then, there’s… “Knives”… yikes!
If the heart is a metaphor and a muscle, both versions found themselves in my songs like never before. I’m not much of a woo-woo guy, so hearing my own music this way is something I want to reject, but also can’t deny..."
