J Schlueter – The Other Mile
The solo project of Jörn Schlüter, frontman of the Bremen/Hamburg Americana band Someday Jacob
J Schlueter – The Other Mile
Format: CD – Digital
Label: Hey!blau Records
Release: 2026
Jörn Schlüter has been recording his songs for his band Someday Jacob for twelve years. Fifty-five songs, four albums, one EP. A new album by the Bremen/Hamburg Americana band is in the works. But something else is happening first – Schlüter has made a solo album
At the beginning of 2024, a repertoire unexpectedly emerged from nowhere. “Normally I first have one song from which the entire album flows,” says Schlüter, “but these songs came in one go. They hung together like a flock of chickens that someone forgot in the fields – they needed a home.” These songs were written during a moment of crisis – Schlüter spent a lot of time with an old acquaintance – anxiety. “She’s a good friend, but sometimes she stays too long,” he says, “like the last guest at a party who doesn’t understand that the hosts want to go to bed. It took a while to make that clear to her.” Such challenging times are part of Schlüter’s biography. He is familiar with them and wants to see them as an invitation to integrate what has not yet been integrated. That’s how you can grow. Not so much to become better, faster, fitter and more productive. But in such a way that you get one step closer to yourself. The songs on “The Other Mile” reflect such considerations. “For me, songwriting is like a milky mirror,” says Schlüter, “I polish it until I can recognize myself – or at least the part of me that the song is about. You put something of yourself out there so that others can do something with. Perhaps they see themselves in it.”
In the fall of 2024, the songwriter called two friends to record the resulting music. Matthias Meusel, who is best known for being Roger Cicero’s drummer for 20 years. Stephan Gade, who plays with Niels Frevert and sometimes with Udo Lindenberg. During the crisis Schlüter listened to Neil Young’s 1974 album “Comes A Time” on repeat. He realized that he wanted similarly reduced arrangements for the new songs. Drums, bass, acoustic guitars. “I felt something gentle, but also something rooted,” Schlüter describes, “in my head it was always Matthias and Stephan playing these songs.”
The recordings took place in Bremen’s Studio-Nord, a 60 years old recording studio with a legendary live room. The records by Dutch classic acts Heintje and Rudi Carrell were made here, and later those by Die Sterne, Niels Frevert, Stoppok, Die Nerven, Muff Potter and so on. Schlüter lives on the other side of the street, which is a plus.
A fourth musician is significantly involved in the sound of “The Other Mile” – Eric Heywood. The US-American played/plays the pedal steel guitar for Son Volt, Jayhawks, Joe Henry and Tift Merritt, among others. He is currently part of the Pretenders’ live band, among others. His golden sound illuminates the depth of the songs on “The Other Mile” and adds Americana warmth. For example, in the California country of “Complicated”. The song sways like a dancing couple at the end of a dance-a-thon, clinging to each other, barely able to stand. Speaking of dancing – one song on the record is called “Used To Love To Dance”, in which Schlüter sings about how he stopped to dance years ago but recently started again with the help of his wife. At first, they danced in the living room, Jörn feeling a little shy and clumsy. But now he’s out there on Bremen’s dance floors. The song is about Adam and Eve, about shame and the body and how all of this is perhaps connected to the well-being of the soul. The song itself is a dance and is set to a bolero rhythm, the chords have a Tex-Mex flair, just like Calexico, for example. Another highlight is “Dissociate”, a somehow archaic Americana song that Jason Molina might also have liked. Schlüter sings about dissociation and the feeling of perceiving the surrounding world as unreal. This can be the consequence of a trauma disorder in which the overwhelmed nervous system withdraws from a situation because a danger seems too great to confront directly. The memory cannot be processed properly and flies around the brain in disorder – a simple trigger is enough to make the brain think the danger is real again.
The album was mixed by Wilco producer Tom Schick at Wilco’s studio The Loft in Chicago. Schick has also produced for Glen Hansard and Norah Jones. “I love how different the records he’s involved with sound. He didn’t fundamentally change the recordings from Studio North – he just made everything better.” This is followed by a passionate monologue about old Neve consoles and even older microphones standing in front of lovingly restored guitar amplifiers from the 1960s. For Schlüter, music is haptic, physical, it has colours and aromas. Stephen Marsh, who recently mastered Jeff Tweedy’s solo album, has also mastered a lot of film music, for example that of “Ted Lasso”. “Sound is super important to me – I go a long way for it. I think it’s so great when a song becomes tangible, when I can let myself fall into it.”
Website: https://www.facebook.com/p/J-Schlueter-61578408282170/
Tracks:
01. Portal (3:58)
02. Complicated (4:12)
03. Dissociate (3:28)
04. Used to Love to Dance (2:57)
05. Springtime (4:17)
06. The Other Mile (5:16)
07. Consolation Prize (2:45)
08. Fly Blind (4:03)
09. Ready Set Go (4:31)
10. Win Me Over (3:52)