When Jeremie Albino was a teenager, he started busking around Toronto, setting up
along the boardwalk or on a street corner downtown, wherever he thought he might find
some passersby. “Usually nobody was listening,” he says, “but occasionally one or two
people would tell me it sounded great. They had places to be and things to do, but they
would stop and listen for a little while. That kind of interaction felt very special to me,
and that’s when I realized I really do love performing. That’s when I realized I could hold
a listener’s interest and give something back to them.”
That experience set Albino on his path, and it showed him how much joy can be found
in the simple act of connecting with a listener, whether it’s an entire crowd or just one
person in that crowd. Since then, he has refined a vital and idiosyncratic mix of styles
and sounds that are rooted in tradition but grasping toward the future: His songs are
grounded in the gritty storytelling of classic country music, propelled by the rhythms of
old-school R&B, played with the wild abandon of early rock ’n’ roll, and sung with the
deep feeling of southern soul. Thanks to his sweaty, livewire concerts, he has been
steadily growing his audience from a few passersby to packed houses around Canada
and the U.S. Our Time In The Sun, his soulful fourth solo album, sounds like the
culmination of what he started out on the street corners of Toronto.
The title track showcases his remarkable range—emotionally, vocally, and stylistically.
Anchored in a Stax rhythm section and punctuated with dramatic horns, it’s a dusty
country-soul number about good love curdling into bad, but there’s none of the romantic
recrimination that infects so many breakup songs. Rather, in his performance as much
as in his lyrics, Albino conveys a warm generosity toward somebody who tried just as
hard as he did to make it work. He’s the rare singer who’s always in the moment, taking
nothing about the song or the melody or the lyrics for granted. And he brings the listener
right into the moment with him. “I try to put my heart into everything,” he says. “There’s
really no other way for me to do it. If I’m not putting everything into the song, then why
would I even bother to sing it?”
As much as he loves performing and winning over listeners, Albino by his own
admission has never felt that same connection to songwriting, but he made a
breakthrough on Our Time in the Sun. Working with producer Dan Auerbach, he
emerges as a sharp, observant songwriter who is quick with a clever turn of phrase and
open to the emotional nuance of the stories he’s telling on “I Don’t Mind Waiting” and
the raw “Struggling With The Bottle.” “I used to struggle with writing. Okay, I used to
hate it. Whenever I needed to write new songs, I would just sit there for months toiling
away.” When he signed with Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound label, however, they spent
hours and hours bouncing ideas off one another, their sessions becoming a masterclass
on how to write a good, solid song.

“Something clicked right away,” says Albino, “and we ended up writing 4 or 5 songs a
day. Before that, it would take me half a year to write 4 or 5 songs.” Auerbach brought in
some of Nashville’s finest songwriters to share their wisdom, including Pat McLaughlin,
Joe Allen, and Bobby Wood. “He told me, if you’re going to build a house, you need to
call some carpenters. You need to bring in the experts who do it every day for a living.
It’s the same way with songs. Some of those guys have been doing this since before I
was born.”
Perhaps the most important lesson, he says, was to let the song come naturally rather
than try to force it. It knows what it needs and will carry you in the right direction.
“Rolling Down The 405” came to life during a break, when Albino and McLaughlin were
messing around while Auerbach took a phone call. “The song came together so fast. I
just started chugging on the guitar and singing lyrics off the top of my head... ‘Jimmy left
me high and dry, rolling down the 401.’ It was originally the 401 because that’s one of
the main highways around here. But 405 just sounded better.” Even Albino isn’t exactly
sure, but he’s content to let them be whatever the listener needs them to be. He has a
keen understanding of how to position a song between the specific and the universal, so
that it will mean something slightly different to everybody who hears it. “The song grows
from what you put into it.”
When they finally scheduled recording sessions for Our Time In The Sun, “Rolling Down
The 405” was the first song they tracked with a band that included some of Nashville’s
finest session players. “We played the demo for the guys in the room, and everybody
just understood what it needed to be.” Together, they all crafted a breezy road song with
the momentum of a classic rock song and the emotional resonance of classic soul—like
a JJ Cale recording. “That was the most fun I’ve had making a record, and it set the
tone for the rest of the sessions.”
They were often surprised by the directions these new songs would take. “Dinner Bell”
opens with a swampy, funky breakdown like Tony Joe White, with Albino grunting and
barking along to the rhythm track, then shifts into a kind of bayou psychedelia,
punctuated by Auerbach’s anarchic guitarwork. (The song contains one of his wildest
solos committed to tape.) “Dan has a great record collection, and when we were
working, he would pull out stuff for inspiration. He put on this old gospel-funk record,
and the rhythm of it was so infectious. We started writing this tune about working like a
dog your whole life and feeling ground down and wondering what life is all about. It’s me
telling a story, but it’s also me telling my story in the music I’ve grown up listening to and
the music I’m just now discovering.”
Albino took that excitement back home to Canada with him, and for once he’s looking
forward to writing some more songs. “I feel like I grew so much just being in a room with
those guys, and I’m jazzed because it shows in the songs. And I feel like I learned so
much about myself and what I’m capable of. This record is the most myself I think I’ve
ever sounded. I’m more comfortable in my own skin now than ever before.”