B-Side Guys

Record deals fall apart. People die. Relationships estrange. Careers break your heart. John Gardner experienced all of these within compressed timeframe, enough accumulated grief to justify quitting music entirely. Instead, he made It Would Be Enough, releasing November 14th under his Common Jack moniker. The album documents what happens when you refuse the self-loathing and bitterness that loss invites, choosing instead to find joy and self-awareness inside the pain. Across nine tracks recorded at Degraw Sound in Brooklyn and produced by Harper James alongside Gardner, the cinematic folk project that began during a 2.5-year world tour with the Tony Award-winning Broadway show Once emerges from hiatus with forceful lyricism and soaring falsetto delivering yearning ache through sweeping indie-folk arrangements.

“Reprise” opens with declaration of impermanence—carving initials into trees so you’ll be remembered when you’re gone, acknowledging loneliness while insisting “you are not alone.” The track establishes the album’s refusal to simplify emotional complexity, its commitment to holding contradictions without resolving them prematurely. Gardner’s conversation with Glen Hansard at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles years ago inspired him to finally record the songs he’d been writing, and that influence shows in the willingness to let vulnerability drive the music rather than armor it with ironic distance.

“Keep It Easy” follows with a determination to claim freedom despite knowing time may be limited. The repeated conviction “I got this feeling / I’m gonna get what I want” functions as self-directed pep talk, willing confidence into existence through repetition. The acknowledgment “I turned up the heat but went down in flames / I struck out but came back swinging” captures the album’s central resilience—failure doesn’t end the story, it just complicates the narrative. Gardner’s vocal range, praised by Huffpost as “singularly impressive,” extends from subdued declaration to ramped up assertion, giving the track dynamic intensity that prevents the positivity from feeling shallow.

“Your Side of the Bed” documents absence through the specific warmth of recently vacated sheets, building entire relationship from that single sensory detail. The imagery of a 2005 Prelude along I-35, the blue dress with polka dots, singing “Elephant Gun” at midnight—these precise memories gain power through specificity. The repeated refrain about the bed’s warmth becomes incantation, attempting to preserve something already disappearing. The track demonstrates Gardner’s gift for what Atwood Magazine described as evoking “a road trip in an open top car, gliding with the hair blowing, eyes squinting in the sun,” though here the open-top freedom gets weighted with loss.

“On My Mind” captures the physical pull of new connection, the way thinking about someone disrupts rational decision-making. The track’s narrator contemplates missing a flight, quitting a job, abandoning responsibility because “every little word you say / Every little look my way / Every little step you take / Is running races all through my mind.” Gardner’s falsetto here delivers the yearning the lyrics describe, voice carrying the ache of wanting someone thirty thousand feet away. The production throughout It Would Be Enough blends intimate lyrics with thrilling arrangements, understanding that emotional truth requires dynamic support rather than acoustic simplicity.

“Wearing Thin” addresses the exhaustion of returning to situations you know damage you—coming back when called at night, bending and breaking, seeing words on the wall that everyone sees but chooses to ignore. The track captures toxic pattern recognition without claiming escape, documenting the moment before breaking free rather than triumphant aftermath. Gardner’s observation “I tied myself up by the door and waited for you / Just to find that I was tied up on my own” captures how we imprison ourselves through devotion, how waiting becomes its own trap.

“To Live is to Lose” functions as the album’s emotional centerpiece, examining how existence requires constant choosing, how gain always implies corresponding loss. The track moves through multiple scenarios—funeral confrontation, relationship uncertainty, cleaned blood and reattached shower door—building argument that loss isn’t failure but condition of living. The final recognition “now I understand I’ll always have to choose / Now I know to live is to lose” reframes grief as inevitable rather than exceptional. Erica Swindell’s violin and additional arrangements add necessary orchestration, elevating the track into something approaching anthem without losing its intimate core.

“Let It” documents recovery from feeling diminished, resistance against the world’s attempt to make you smaller. The declaration “I won’t let it” repeated against acknowledgment “the world has a way / Of making you feel smaller by the day” captures active resistance rather than passive acceptance. The track’s determination to trust “it would be enough to be enough / In my own skin, on my own time, in my own way” speaks directly to Gardner’s hiatus and return—stepping back from industry pressure to rediscover why he makes music at all.

“Surface Tension” closes the album with spare acknowledgment of fragility and resilience existing simultaneously. The simple declaration “We are easy to break / But holding together / We give and we take / And weather the weather” distills the album’s philosophy into essential terms. The repeated “I will always love you” functions less as romantic promise and more as existential commitment—to connection despite impermanence, to vulnerability despite risk, to continuing despite accumulated grief.

What distinguishes It Would Be Enough from countless other albums mining personal tragedy is Gardner’s refusal to collapse into the grief. The album observes how “the most beautiful things in life are usually bittersweet, temporary, and nuanced” without demanding permanence or resolution. His forceful lyricism combined with soaring falsetto gives every song yearning ache, but it’s yearning oriented toward future rather than just mourning past. The album title itself captures this orientation—it would be enough, not it was enough or it should be enough, suggesting ongoing negotiation with adequacy rather than settled conclusion.

For an artist whose record deal fell apart amid family deaths and estranged relationships, creating an album this open requires particular courage. Gardner could have retreated into bitterness or abandoned the project entirely. Instead, he made what Swanodown described as music that “can stir passion and even bring back some great memories of your own past,” proving that processing personal devastation through art can produce work that resonates beyond individual circumstances. The album release show at Sleepwalk in Brooklyn on November 17th will test how these songs translate to live performance, but the recorded versions capture someone choosing creation over collapse, community over isolation, continuation despite substantial reasons to quit.