Good Reverend emerges from a week in the wilderness with ‘Sweet Tea and Cigarettes’

Jeff Meyers Jr. started work on the songs that would become new Good Reverend album Sweet Tea and Cigarettes at the early height of the pandemic, fueled in part by the internal pressures that built up amid lock down. 

“When I wrote these songs, I didn’t think there was a theme running across them. I was just more focused on this idea that, man, I’m stuck here in this place and we’re not allowed to go anywhere and I just want to see something explode or set on fire,” said Meyers, who will join bandmates Larry Doyle (guitar), Aaron Cottrell (bass), and Jason Winner (drums) for an album release show at Ace of Cups on Saturday, Oct. 4, supported by Two Cow Garage and G. Finesse. “And I wanted that to come from my guitar.”

Mission accomplished. Sweet Tea and Cigarettes arrives packed with big, hard swinging riffs that nod to the likes of Queens of the Stone Age, containing a momentum at odds with the stillness from which it emerged. But despite Meyers’ initial belief that the songs didn’t share a lyrical connection, with a degree of distance from the writing he began to see a couple of themes emerge, including one rooted in a series of self-realizations brought about by being forced to sit with himself through the initial Covid wave, and a second born of the idea that even in dark times moments of joy have a way of working their way to the surface. 

“Once in a while I look up and I’m having a damn good time,” Meyers sings on “Damn Good Time,” a revved-up tune propelled by road-grading riffs and relentless, muscular drums. 

“It’s hard to be anyone right now. In the air we’re living in, it’s hard to be a human being, it’s hard to be a musician, it’s hard to be a parent,” Meyers said. “And so, I think we’re all sort of forced to put our heads down in many different ways and get certain things done and support other people and support ourselves, trying to make it all make sense. And then every once in a while, you find yourself in a moment where your head peaks up above the water for a minute and you’re like, ‘Oh, fuck, this is kind of cool.’ … And that idea of incidental joy definitely crops up a couple times throughout this record.”

The Good Reverend bandmates experienced many of these moments while recording Sweet Tea and Cigarettes, which came together over a snowy week in January at a cabin in Hocking Hills. The sessions differed radically from the more labored process involved with the group’s 2023 debut, Deliverance, which took shape over the course of four years, the process extended by everything from Covid to some band members going through life changes that at times diverted attention from the project.

“We’re inspired by bands like the White Stripes and the Stooges, who can go into the studio and lay out a whole album in seven to 10 days, where at that point you’re capturing lightning in a bottle,” Meyers said. “And with the types of songs we had written, we wanted that kind of energy.”

Joined by producer Alex Douglas, the quartet arrived at the small, high-ceilinged cabin with what Meyers described as “a week’s worth of food and a month’s worth of booze,” planning to capture a new record in seven days or fewer. “And that was the week a massive snowstorm came through, and we got snowed in with feet of snow around the cabin,” said Meyer, who noted that the band members only made two trips out during the week: one to purchase more alcohol on Thursday and a second to Home Tavern in Logan early on Saturday evening to celebrate the record being completed. “I’d be hard pressed to make a record any other way at this point, because it was just so fulfilling and so fun, and we were so focused.”

The sessions took place in the cabin’s main living space, with Meyer describing how the musicians set up amps inside of closets and had cables snaking throughout the entire abode. The two-story ceilings lent the recording a natural reverb, while the floor-to-ceiling windows offered the musicians a panoramic view into the Logan wilderness as they worked. The biggest challenge involved adapting to Winner’s punishing playing style, which caused some inevitable sonic bleed in the room that Meyers said Douglas tweaked in the mixing stage, and which the musicians quickly accepted as complimentary to the album’s overall sound.

More gradual, however, was the self-acceptance that Meyers said emerged the longer he sat with these songs, which described as heavily rooted in personal revelations, and in particular his willingness to shape his life around the pursuit of music.

“And that doesn’t mean I’m trying to get famous – if a career were to happen, that would be nice – but I unabashedly learned I don’t have a problem choosing [music] over things and sometimes people, which is not always great,” Meyers said. “But when I’m there with my best friends, doing this beautiful thing, nothing tops that. And I’m lucky to be able to continue to chase that, and to be surrounded by people outside of [my band] who are supportive of the way that I am. Long story short, one of the biggest things I learned about myself from that time period is that when I make a choice about something, I really stick to it.”