Big Dreams & High Hopes is an album that marries both his Texas-country rockin’ past with his mainstream country-rockin’ present. With soft acoustic guitars leading the way, there is a reflective mood to the beautiful ballad “Seeing Stars.” The lyrics are truly poetic as Jack and co-writer Chris Thompkins remind us to keep dreaming and hoping for the best, even if things aren’t happening as fast or the way we want them to. Patty Griffin provides some angelic harmony vocals on the track too. This one could really be a big hit this winter if Jack and Big Machine decide to release a more reflective single as the follow-up to rockin’ hit singles “Barefoot and Crazy” and “That’s A Man.” While the former has been the bigger hit, it is the latter song that manages to showcase a little message in the confines of a song with a killer, albeit familiar melodic hook (which recalls Lee Roy Parnell’s “On The Road”).
Long-time Jack Ingram fans will recall that he recorded “Barbie Doll” on his “Hey You” album from the year 2000. While the song is the same, he has slightly changed up the roadhouse rocker. Now Dierks Bentley duets with Jack on the track while a bunch of artist friends make up the “Little Big Lost Beat Up Ford Funky Times Freedom Choir.” Some of the artists in that group are Little Big Town, Randy Houser, the Lost Trailers, James Otto, Blu Sanders, Jedd Hughes and studio cats who were in the studio during the recording of the track. The title track, co-written with Gary Burr, certainly feels like an anthem ready to break Jack Ingram open to more than just the country music audience as it would really fit both Triple A Adult Rock and Adult Pop radio formats. The song is soft and acoustic but that chorus of “Big Dreams high hopes, they have led me through the hard times like a north star shining showing me where to go, they’re what got the whole thing started and they’re what keep this cowboy riding down the road, big dreams, high hopes” really sets up the song to be the centerpiece that it is on this album.
Jack Ingram has always had a Petty-like vibe to some of his songs and that vibe is really evident on the Radney Foster-co-produced and written “Heartache” and “Man In Your Life” while the slow-burning “In The Corner” shelps end this superbly creative and country rockin’ record on a high note. The self-written, Doug Lancio-produced song finds Jack Ingram looking inside and singing a song that feels like we’re listening into a man’s most inner thoughts.
Big Dreams & High Hopes may not be the record that long time fans were looking for but it doesn’t exactly include any rock-remakes this time around either. It feels like the work of a man with a deep understanding of where he is and where he wants to go. Jack Ingram may now be “mainstream” and grown up but he is very much still the young boy with the wide eyed Big Dreams & High Hopes.
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