Album Notes

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re saying behind my back, you’re spouting off opinion as if it was fact,” Jake Kelly sings in his poignant, scathing track “You Know Who You Are” off his sophomore release “Bitter...Party of One...Your Table’s Ready.”

The aptly-named “Bitter” sums up the feeling of many of the songs in this collection. In addition to the tribute to backstabbing in the aforementioned song, Kelly sings about a race horse that was never allowed to win, a sometimes girlfriend with money lust, life in the office where no one is trusted, and an ode to the recording industry that determines the quality of a song while listening to no more than 30 seconds of it.

“I won’t tell you that I was feeling elated when I was writing this album.” Kelly offers, “There was still more I had to get off my chest that I hadn’t covered on my first record.”

In fact, Kelly wrote many of the songs on “Bitter” while recording his debut CD, “I Shouldn’t Talk When I Drink.”

“My first record was just like most other singer/songwriters’, in as much as I took material from the bulk of my songwriting career. Or at least the ones that I own the rights to,” Kelly says with a laugh. “But this CD (“Bitter”) is the first ten songs I wrote after we started recording the first disc. I think it is more cohesive in terms of having the same attitude run through the songs.”

Using an abbreviated version of the band that recorded the first CD, Kelly handles all the guitar work that oddly reflects his vocal style. Formidable steel guitar and dobro guitar is played by sideman Mike Fried, on top of solid backing by the rhythm section of Matt Dolan on drums and Jeff Jackson on bass.

“Sure, I might have been bitter when I was writing this record,” Kelly says, “but I must have gotten over it, because I had a blast recording it.”