Search - Casey James :: Strip it Down

1 All I Need 3:33 - 2 Bulletproof (feat. Delbert McClinton) 2:34 - 3 Hard Times, Heartaches & Scars 4:20 - 4 Hurt Me More 4:43 - 5 I Got to Go 3:19 - 6 Messin' Around 3:16 - 7 Strip It All Down 3:06 - 8 Need Your Love so Bad 4:39 - 9 Different Kind of Love 3:55 - 10 Supernatural 2:51 - 11 Killin' Myself 3:45 - 12 Makin' Up 4:08 - 13 Stupid Crazy (feat. Bonnie Bishop) 3:07 - 14. Fight You for the Blues 5:12 - -- "Every sunrise on another day is another chance to smile." - It's not often that the blues gets summarized with a happy platitude, but when Casey James inserted that phrase into "Hard Times, Heartaches & Scars," it was a hard-won truth. James is familiar to many as a finalist on season 9 of American Idol, and familiar to still more as a country artist who notched a Top 15 single with "Crying On A Suitcase." - But in Strip It Down, James comes into his own by following a simple plan: being himself. Instead of following the expectations of TV producers or the game plan of a well-oiled record company, James collected 13 songs he'd written or co-written (plus a soulful take on Little Willie's John's "Need Your Love So Bad"), holed up in a Nashville studio with a trim, crackerjack band and hammered out the bulk of the album in a scant four days. - It's titled Strip It Down because it's exactly what Casey James did - shed off the layers of stylized artistic clothing that he'd been given in those other public ventures to find the real artist underneath, a guy with a convincing, smoky vocal quality and a burning, lyrical skill with a guitar. - "All I want to do is play music," James says. "Stripping it back to just me making a record of music that I love was a huge stepping stone in my life." - James delivers it all with a commanding presence, a rebuilt confidence that comes from doing what he does naturally, and doing it well. - Total running time: 52:28 -- UPC 748252287595 - The Amazon ASIN for the mp3 version of this CD is B071ZHWC9R - Another listing by