Ahead of Durand Jones’ debut solo album Wait Til I Get Over (out May 5 via Dead Oceans), he has offered a Muscle Shoals-esque tribute to his rural Southern hometown of Hillaryville, Louisiana via his debut track “Lord Have Mercy,” and an impassioned ode to Black queer love on “That Feeling,” which marked his own coming out and earned best of the week acclaim from the likes of Rolling Stone, Billboard, Paste, No Depression, and more. Today, he shares the mettle, heartfelt ballad “Sadie.”

“Sadie” pulls at heartstrings with its timeless, soulful croons and singalong smoothness reminiscent of Sam Cooke and Brittany Howard – the vulnerable lyricism digs deep into the complexities of remorse and guilt.  

Of the track, Durand says, “Sadie is about a time of infidelity in my life and learning ultimately that there is no true fulfillment in that type of relationship for me. No thrill can curve the guilt I felt at the time. I’m thankful to Mark McWhirter who brought me the music for this song. I knew immediately what I would write about when I heard it. My friend and fellow musician, David James helped me turn my veiled lyrics into a story with some transparency to it. Of everything I went through with Sadie, this song will always be the most valuable prize from that experience.” 

Over ten years in the making, the album is a collection of the personal and cultural through past, present and future. Infusing Southern sentiment into the genres of rock, folk, gospel, and R&B, Wait Til I Get Over is the soundtrack to a homegoing–odes and prayers of worth, belief, love, and belonging.

Known as one of the singers and principal songwriters of Durand Jones & the Indications, in this solo debut, Jones leads to a place far more vulnerable and singular. Much of Wait Til I Get Over is built on Jones’ relationship to his hometown of Hillaryville, Louisiana, a town first established as a form of reparations to previously enslaved Black Americans. The town, and Jones’ reflections, are a tangle of contradictions: pristine beauty and ragged roads; an adolescent’s drive to escape matured into the desire to honor one’s roots; the flourishing of a Black community which then suffered a slow, systemic ravaging. Grounded in the sound of what it means to go home, Wait Til I Get Over is a loving portrait of the rural margins and affirms Jones as a modern vanguard of Southern Black music.