Jeremy Parsons’ “The Garden” — Dirt Under the Nails, Heart on the Sleeve, and No Bull
Look, I don’t know if Jeremy Parsons owns a leather jacket or ever puked off a stage, but dang
if he doesn’t bleed something real on “The Garden.” This isn’t some Frankenstein monster stitched together in a Nashville boardroom by guys named Chad with perfect hair. No, this is a human being sitting in the mud of his memories, calloused fingers pulling at guitar strings, singing because there’s no other way to get the poison out. It’s stripped down, honest, and full of the kind of bruised humanity that most polished records can’t even fake.
Parsons reaches back to his childhood… not in a cheap, nostalgic way, but like a guy hauling up an old, rusted shovel from the back of the shed because it’s the only tool that still works. Raised by a horticulturist father, Parsons spent his youth digging in the dirt, wishing he was anywhere else. Fast forward a few decades and that dirt has turned to metaphor: mental health as a garden you have to tend or watch rot. It’s not some Hallmark card, either. It’s a real metaphor for the work it takes to stay sane, to stay whole.
Musically, “The Garden” ambles along without a care for modern flash. It’s a steady acoustic strum, a lazy river of melody that lets you drift inside the song rather than battering you with hooks. No electronic tricks. No Auto-Tuned choruses. No cinematic swells built for a fake climax. Parsons trusts the song to carry itself on the strength of its own bones, and it does.
Lyrically, Parsons tosses out little gut punches disguised as simple questions. “Does it wither when you’re feeling blue?” he asks, like a guy tossing a beer can into a bonfire and not waiting for an answer. Because he already knows the answer. You do too. You’ve lived it; the way depression rots you from the inside out when you stop tending to yourself. Parsons isn’t preaching from a mountaintop; he’s down in the mud with the rest of us, pointing at the weeds and saying, “Yeah, me too.”
And that’s where this song really earns its weight. Parsons isn’t trying to sound smarter than you, or tougher, or cooler. He’s just real. His voice doesn’t soar. It settles, it creaks in the right places. It sounds like he’s sitting next to you on a porch somewhere in Texas, letting the silence fill in the gaps between words because that’s how real people talk when they’re hurting.
You can feel echoes of legends in Parsons’ DNA; the cracked sincerity of Townes Van Zandt, the hard-earned soul of Steve Earle, maybe even the naked vulnerability of Elliott Smith on a sober day. But Parsons isn’t imitating anyone. He’s standing on their shoulders just long enough to plant something of his own.
There’s a rawness to “The Garden” that most Americana artists these days can’t touch. Too many are busy polishing their sound for streaming playlists, sanding off the splinters that make music mean something. Parsons leaves the splinters in. Hell, he sharpens them. This song doesn’t pat you on the back. It reminds you that life is work, constant, messy work…and sometimes you don’t even know if you’re doing it right until something blooms.
If you’re looking for another Spotify background buzz track to pour over your Sunday brunch, keep moving. But if you want a song that feels like a late-night confession you weren’t supposed to hear but needed to, “The Garden” is for you.
Rating: 9/10
This isn’t just a song; it’s a living, breathing thing. It grows on you. It calls you out and calls you home at the same time. Jeremy Parsons isn’t just playing music, he’s cultivating something a lot rarer: truth.
–Leslie Banks
