Nashville based roots rock singer/songwriter Pat Anderson awoke early one August morning a while back to find himself on the floor of a group cell in the Bullitt County Jail roughly thirty miles south of Louisville, Kentucky. He wasn’t there for reasons nearly as dark as the circumstances depicted in some of his songs, but the experience provided the spark for “Bullitt County Cage,” a Southern rock character sketch of rural methamphetamine abuse and the first track he would write for his debut album “Magnolia Road.”

All eleven cuts on “Magnolia Road” reflect Anderson’s personal background (born in Oklahoma and raised hard by the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains) and his self- described “healthy obsession” with American roots music. While he often performs live solo, armed only with acoustic guitar and harmonica, a stellar Nashville backing band helps fill out the record with a resonating Americana vibe owing as much to Tom Petty and Lynyrd Skynyrd as it does to more traditional touchstones of that genre Steve Earle, T-Bone Burnett, and Ryan Adams.

Lyrically, Anderson walks the traditional folksinger’s line:

“They say you should write about what you know. There’s a lot that I don’t know, but I do know what it feels like to laugh, cry, love, sweat, bleed, win, and lose; to be hungry for something better. Those are the things that make us human, good and bad--those are the things I’m trying to get a handle on in these songs."

The personal, borderline confessional strain of the album’s leadoff rocker “Follow Me Down” and the achingly melancholy ballad “She’s The One” bleeds naturally into starkly written tales of people struggling with the more desperate side of existence in “Martinsville” and “Six Spent Shells.” Reflective but upbeat numbers such as “The Hometown Blues” are tailor made for county roads and car stereos, while a down tempo, banjo accented interpretation of the Appalachian folk song “I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground” and the simultaneously resigned but defiant “Let It Rain” suggest determined resilience even in the face of life’s tensions and contradictions.

Anderson and Grammy award-winning engineer Chad Carlson co-produced “Magnolia Road,” which features Nick Buda (drums, percussion), ex-Jayhawk Jen Gunderman (piano, organ, accordion, harmonium), 2010 Americana Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year nominee Will Kimbrough (electric guitar, mandolin, banjo, etc.), Tim Marks (bass), and Rob McNelley (electric guitar).
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