Page 23 - ION Indie Magazine_JulyAug 2021

Interview/Review by Scott Wikle
https://www.facebook.com/mykindofcountrymkoc INTERVIEW / REVIEW
Photo credit: Andy Garcia Reyes

West of Texas is a real country music band, formed in 2003 by Jerry Zinn, who is the lead
singer, songwriter, and band leader. The band’s debut album "Heartache, Hangovers and
Honky Tonks" began as a 3-song EP in 2010. It was intended to be a full album before
health problems hit Zinn and he was unable to sing. When Zinn recovered and was able
to sing again, he put together a new line-up to play gigs. This was just before the Covid
19 pandemic hit and playing live music came to a full stop. Because of this, Zinn went into
the studio to finish the album he had started over ten years earlier. The end result is a
testament to his belief in the strengths of traditional country music.

This album is all originals but sounds like a classic album right out of 1966. To add to the
authenticity, Zinn pressed it on vinyl complete with the old-style gatefold cover with some
ring wear built in and "Duke's Record" written on the back. The cover itself pictures
someone walking in on a guy and a girl on a couch, presumably a cheating situation. This
reminded me of the old Porter Wagoner album cover, "Cold Hard Facts Of Life," in which
Wagoner comes home early from a trip to find his wife fooling around on him. Cheating
songs are a long-standing tradition in country music. I mentioned this similarity to Zinn,
who replied, "When I came up with the idea, I hadn't seen that Porter Wagoner record yet.
I think I was trying to go for a Moe Bandy kind of look. I remember telling my band my idea
for the cover and they didn’t like it. They thought it should just be the band logo. Let it be
known now that I will never release an album with just the logo on it. I think that’s a cop
out. Aren’t we here to tell stories? Why not tell a story on the cover? Making the picture
on the cover (and inside the gatefold pictures) was a great time. Invite your friends over,
tell them your idea…and somehow we pulled it off better than I could have ever imagined."

Zinn himself works for Stoughton Printing in the City of Industry, California, "Well, the
record jacket was made by my day job. I work at Stoughton Printing, which is the oldest
record jacket printer/manufacturer. They've been doing it since 1965 and what they're
doing for is what's called the ‘old-style tip-on jackets.’ We're actually using the same
machines that were making jackets back in the 60s and 70s. Your standard jacket that
most bands have made today is what's called Direct to Board, which means it's printed
right to the board, where the old-style tip-on jackets are printed on paper and wrapped
around the board. So, if you look at the inside of the jacket, you'll see the seams in the
corners where the paper was wrapped from the outside to the inside, then another piece
of paper is glued down on top of that. If you look at your old Merle Haggard or George
Jones records, you'll see that they're all tip-on jackets. When the process started, the
paper was wrapped from back to front, but later on, that was changed to hide the seams
in the corners and changed it from front to back. Put this way, we've been around long
enough…if you have a record collection, you have a Stoughton jacket."

Zinn goes on to explain more about the album's artwork, "A few years after my granddad
passed away, my parents, sister, and I moved in with my grandma. There, I found my
granddad's record collection. Around that time, my parents bought four CDs of Time/Life
country compilations of the 60s and 70s. After that, I was hooked. If you’ve seen the album
artwork…not the picture of the people on the cover, but the worn-out parts, the ring wear,
the dirt…the part that says ‘Duke’s Record’ that I had my grandma write. It’s all a nod to
my granddad's record collection."