Music Review: Grant Glad, ‘One Man’s Story’
The Minnesota singer-songwriter’s lyrical and storytelling strengths drive his first solo full-length release, a brilliant concept album that plays out like a novel.
Grant Glad’s One Man’s Story album artwork.
Grant Glad approached the concept of One Man’s Story as if it were a novel—the last chapter of which had been written years before the rest. An earlier version of “Dancing at the VFW,” the final original song on his debut solo album, had been released in 2019 with regional success. It wasn’t until he wrote “Gunpowder at Dawn,” which would become the new album’s lead single, that Glad realized there was a story to be told between the two songs.
One Man’s Story, which came out New Year’s Day 2024, tells of a Midwestern man born from the stories and experiences Glad encountered growing up in Minnesota. Influenced strongly by John Steinbeck, the individual songs are soulful, heartfelt, and captivating, and they combine to create an album that’s even greater than the sum of its parts. The musicians on the album are also top notch; Glad brought in artists like Ryan Young (Trampled by Turtles) to play violin on “Gunpowder at Dawn” and Liz Draper (Charlie Parr) to play upright bass across the whole album. Blissfully cohesive and heartwarming, it’s the perfect listen for this time of year in Minnesota.
The album starts with “Gunpowder at Dawn,” a folky ballad of a 13-year-old’s rite of passage into adulthood, attending deer camp and witnessing his dad let loose with friends for the first time. Packed with vivid imagery, it’s our first introduction to the character we come to know well by the end of the album.
We move forward a few years in “When It’s Gonna End,” with our protagonist meeting up with his high school sweetheart (future wife) in a Walgreens parking lot to listen to music and drink booze she stole from her parents’ liquor cabinet. This track contains one of the most endearing yet least sappy love scenes I’ve encountered in a song, kicked off by guest vocalist Laurel Bur singing, “Goddamn you’re so dramatic, but I know one way to shut you up.” The scene is followed by the girl’s brash denial of mortality—“I don’t plan on getting old”—which foreshadows the album’s last original track. I love the youthful honesty of the line “They always tell us that this won’t last forever, but they never tell us when it’s gonna end.”
Next we meet our character after his return from the military with the bluesy “At Ease.” Not a veteran himself, Glad interviewed his dad and some close friends who were in the military to be sure the song felt honest. The key theme from the interviews was how different everything was when they came back home, which became the focus of the song. The next track, “On the Ropes,” shows us our narrator’s continued re-acclimation into civilian life, having difficulty making ends meet. The song captivates with its riveting plea of a refrain: “I’ll take a break / That doesn’t end in down.”
“The Night Before Thanksgiving,” a lovely spoken-word song, finds our protagonist visiting his hometown American Legion, packed with old friends who came home for the holiday. But our character still lives at home with his parents, and the whole situation puts his life into perspective, making him feel uncomfortable and left behind in life: “I might be too old to run away / There’s nobody trying to catch me anymore.”
He goes outside for a cigarette, the cool thing to do several years earlier, but apparently everyone stopped smoking over the years … except his high school sweetheart from an earlier song. She asks for a smoke which, according to the next track, kicks off something special. One of the many great lyrics in this song is the closing line: “There’s something about your childhood bedroom that brings everything into focus when you’re going to sleep at 32.”
The next track, “Morningside,” is a love song full of adoration, but in a way that’s very real and enduring, not flowery or fleeting. Glad says this song was inspired by noting the beauty of his fiancée in the morning:
I’m not Prince Charming I’m just impersonating him
But I thank my lucky stars that you let me in
And when that clock strikes 12AM
I hope I’m here for your morning side again
Grant Glad. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“Gettin’ on Fine” is a song about the quiet, day-to-day love of a marriage. Co-written by Glad and Sarah Morris, it hits the nail on the head with relatable moments: “So I’ll load the car, and you get his bags, tell me what kind of coach has practice on New Year’s Day,” Grant sings. Morris chimes in: “I’ll grab the coffee and something for your head, and we’re right back to running once again.” For a happily married man with just enough children, this song captures the beauty of a long, loving marriage perfectly.
In the next track, we say goodbye to our protagonist’s wife with memories of “Dancing at the VFW” every week. Glad wrote this song with his grandparents in mind. It was also inspired by “Waitin’ on June,” which Hank Williams Sr.’s granddaughter Holly Williams wrote about her grandparents—hence the song’s reference to “two stepping to a Hank Williams tune” at the VFW. There’s also a touching callback to the wife’s teenage sense of immortality in “When It’s Gonna End”:
Everyone said you'd be forever young
When they saw you cut a rug
But time didn’t do as it’s told
When it left you in that hospital room
The album closes with a duet of “Amazing Grace” between Glad and Morris that is simply breathtaking. I was in awe at the end of One Man’s Story, like being in a theater staring at the screen after a great movie. Glad displays his tremendous talent as a storyteller on this album, and it’s clear that he put serious energy toward its creation. It’s a wonderful piece of art, one I’ll continue to enjoy for years to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jacson Miller. Photo courtesy of the author.
Jacson Miller is a huge fan of great Americana music and the songwriters who create it. He is a passionate supporter of equity in education and youth development as a Board Member of the nonprofit ‘Search Institute’. A long-time resident of Minneapolis, he grew up in southern Indiana, has a Business degree from Purdue University, an MBA from Duke University, and loves being a dad, playing guitar, and songwriting.
