Jakko M. Jakszyk continues to astound all of us with his exceptional talent and appeal. This multifaceted award-winning musician, singer, composer, poet, producer, engineer, actor, and author generates well deserved attention and acclaim with each project that he is involved with. His portfolio is large, diverse, and well-respected. His forty plus years of playing music covers a significant swathe of rock history, and he is considered a giant in the progressive rock scene. When he speaks (or writes, plays), people listen. His last studio album, 2020’s Secrets And Lies was a brilliant and sophisticated work revealing raw, intense emotions and fascinating insights into the artist’s life. In particular, one track, The Rotters Club is Closing Down is just exquisitely sung by Jakszyk.
On 1st October 2024, Jakszyk published his memoir, entitled, Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair? a hefty 380 pages of a life spent in music but also about Jakszyk’s complicated life and his search for his biological parents (Jakszyk was adopted as an infant by a Polish couple). His birth mom, Peggy Curran was Irish, and his biological father Glen Tripp was an American serviceman. This critically well-received volume garnered high and well-deserved praise and helped a musician struggling with confidence to find focus and some peace. With the help of his partner, Louise Patricia Crane, and some friends, Jakszyk turned his attention to his known craft of making music and recorded Son of Glen.
Like his memoir, Jakszyk’s Son of Glen is the result of deep soul-searching and huge emotional investment. It is the product of prodigious research in family letters, diaries, municipal and other genealogical records as well as familial lore. The result is a brutally honest and vulnerable album laying bare all his ghosts, insecurities, and hesitations haunting him throughout his life. This is his unbiased unique and complex journey, fraught with unmet expectations and unfulfilled relationships. Son of Glen is Jakszyk’s coming to terms with his past and its poignant, bold, brilliant, and beautiful. I was enraptured by this album.
Son of Glen consists of 8 songs clocking in at just under 43 minutes. The opening track, Ode To Ballina, a haunting Gaelic prelude with its low whistle, piano, and sumptuous cello hearkening the listener to another time and place. There is a sense of welcome and invitation as if a door to the past is slowly opening for entry, but there also is an overriding sense of loss and longing as the track softly ends. Somewhere Between Then and Now is a tribute to a friend who died too young. It’s a coming-of-age piece that serves as a mirror to the not too distance past with memories forming and taking hold, regaling in more wondrous reminiscences of youth and then, with no warning, the reality of life and its challenges and struggles set in as one begins to “grows up”:
We killed and ate our sacred cows
And nothing seems the same somehow
It all just slipped away
The future that seemed crystal clear
Got stuck in time and disappeared
We watched an era ending here
As the blue skies turned to grey
The world we’d set to conquer is just another puff of smoke
It’s just a speck in the horizon, just a childhood memory
Looks like I lost my sense of humour and my sense of irony
Somewhere between then and now”
This track, with its heart-wrenching lyrics and the deftness of Jakszyk’s acoustic guitar strumming moved me deeply. The wistful melody blends perfectly with the lyrics. Its imagery so powerful and evocative of younger days when things seem more innocent and people more heroic. Jakszyk’s emotive vocals on this track brings it all together. The song builds and forges as it transitions to a heavier feel with Jakszyk’s sensational electric guitar playing. This song is a masterpiece of the singer-songwriter genre.
How Did I Let You Get So Old is another slow burner with Jakszyk playing piano and in a low bossa nova style beat. There is a gorgeous descant as Jakszyk lays bare all his insecurities and unfulfilled expectations growing up in a strict and fear driven home with his adoptive father. So many questions and so many things to say but not enough time for true reconciliation. There is longing and melancholy dripping through this track as if you, the listener, is watching it wholly enfold on the big screen. I was immersed in this track as Jakszyk used a recording of his father’s voice and spliced it in the track to stunning effect. It’s so emotional and vivid. You could hear the discussion of father and son reverberate throughout the track. To put into lyrics this kind of feeling and candour is truly a gift both the listener and healing for the artist himself. The song reminded me of Frank McCourt’s brilliant memoir, Angela’ Ashes.
With temperate subtleness and intense lyrical passion, Jakszyk turns his attention to his love and partner, Louise Patricia Crane, on the fourth song, This Kiss Never Lies. A fellow musician herself, whose 2024 album, Netherworld, Jakszyk co-produced. This sumptuous track is a tribute to the love someone has for another and how that love could literally save a life. Jakszyk’s piano and gut-wrenching vocals are pleading and urgent.
Even though she’s drowning
And in danger herself
Lord knows I don’t deserve this
The strength of her love’s selfless
And knows no boundaries at all
Ignoring the warning – buoys
Whilst she never fails to care
And stops me from falling
Onto the rocks below
Having dragged me from the water
Resuscitated me with kisses
And somehow brought me back to life
Who could ever be more faithful
And though I let you down completely
You still showed love all the while
The track is guided by a stellar bassline which harnesses and controls the musical canopy. To be able to create such vistas of music and at the same time, such vivid imagery with one’s musical skill is sublime. Jakko Jakszyk is one of those rare artists who can be visual and lyrical at the same time.
Ode To Ballina (Reprise) adds more of a weightier feel with a synthesizer and electric guitar addition, keeping the sense of mystery and longing intact. The track serves as an interlude and emotional space for the listener to gather his or her thoughts and digest what has been offered by the artist.
I Told You So is a funky groove laden “in your face” song that reminds me of something that TOTO or Steely Dan would have recorded. An infectious track made better with the addition of Marillion’s Ian Mosley on drums and Jakszyk’s son Django on bass. An absolute scorching tune full of “what ifs” and regrets looking back on trauma caused during childhood, for many a kind of PTSD that never leaves you. Jakszyk’s vocal delivery is cynical and bitter especially at the bridge section, which is perfect for this mood. The train-like chug at the start and finish is sublime.
The third and final instrumental, (Get A) Proper Job is a short, quirky and proggy intermezzo with Jakszyk’s guitar playing up tempo and quickly changing direction. Layered keyboards in unison with phenomenal rhythmic drumming by Zoltan Csörsz (Flower Kings, Lifesigns) leaves the listener wanting more!
The heart and soul of this album is the epic title track, Son of Glen. This protean, courageous and touching song has it all. From the remarkable and affecting lyrics and the utterly fantastic groove to the masterly guitar playing by Jakszyk, this track combines literary wonderment of a Henry James novel with the songwriting skills of Jakszyk to create a sort of a mini-opera. The ghost of his biological father, Glen Tripp hovering over his life and the fantasy of what that life would be like they had met. The possibilities for this sort of thing are endless and the listener feels that longing and that tinge of wistfulness.
Gorgeous acoustic guitar opens the track to keyboards and Jakszyk’s (and Crane’s) emotive vocals, shaping and evolving as the track takes on more of a rock feel, electric and pulsating, with angelic descant harmonies. Just glorious. Midway through there is this a lovely upbeat tempo and Jakszyk’s dramatic pleading vocals with the ghost, the shadow of his would-be father, wanting him, wishing him, almost willing him to be there. There is an almost Shakespearean quality to this track. It ends as Jakszyk softens his tone as if defeated and alone, realizing that it was just a fantasy and sings hey Glen while the guitar fades with a reverb quality creating this sense of atmospheric mystery and uncertainty and leaving the listener to wonder about it all.
You could save me?
For somewhere in this field
There’s a crack in time
Where you can fly and climb
And bring her back to me?
A signal will come through
Right the wrongs
Address the past
For this time will come true
Knowing I’m stood here alone
Is this the ghost of my father?
Trying to guide my way home
A brilliant and elegant closing to an extraordinary album.
Son Of Glen is based on excruciatingly emotional and spiritual legacies. To make such an album, requires focus, honesty, and acceptance. Digging in a genealogical minefield for truth, clarity and understanding and sometimes finding nothing but disappointment and bitterness but moving ever on for truth, is difficult. Jakszyk’s visiting old neighbourhood haunts, childhood homes and listening to the voices of the past. It’s more than looking back nostalgically for memory, it is looking for the foundation of who you are, of who you became. Son of Glen is that outcome. It is his raison d’être. This album is an inspiration, a testament to Jakszyk’s mettle, perseverance, dignity and humanity, not only go through this trial by fire, but then to share it musically with the world.
This album spoke to me in such immeasurable ways and sent me reeling, as if in a time machine, back into my challenging and troubled childhood growing up with a severely alcoholic mother whom I adored and could not save. I listened to this album nonstop for the past month playing it whenever I could. It served as a mantra, a balm of healing. It allowed me to let go. It helped me reconcile with my past and it was truly a gift at this time and place. I never thought music could do that, but this release did. This album moved me with such emotion and conviction. It was an album I desperately needed to hear at this time and in my life.
And I am truly humbled to be typing these words in praise of it. Thank you, Jakko.
TRACK LISTING
01. Ode To Ballina (2:11)
02. Somewhere Between Then And Now (7:41)
03. How Did I Let You Get So Old? (5:58)
04. This Kiss Never Lies (7:06)
05. Ode to Ballina (Reprise) (2:11)
06. I Told You So (5:41)
07. (Get A) Proper Job (1:37)
08. Son Of Glen (10:18)
Total Time – 42:23
MUSICIANS
Jakko M. Jakszyk – Lead Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Drums, Programming
~ With:
Caroline Lavelle – Cello (1)
Louise Patricia Crane – Backing Vocals
Django Jakszyk – Bass (2,3,6,7 & 8)
Gavin Harrison – Drums
Zoltán Csörsz – Drums
Ian Mosley – Drums
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: InsideOut Music
Country of Origin: UK
Date of Release: 27th June 2025
LINKS
Jakko M. Jakszyk – Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | YouTube | X | Instagram
