NATHAN & JESSIE: Old Adobe Home

It is often said that you get to choose your friends but don’t get to choose your family. Out of the thousands and thousands of people we meet, it is only a select few who enter our inner circles of camaraderie and friendship, who become our school chums, the guys we go camping with, beer drinking buddies, and dance partners.

Family is a mixed bag of wonders, weirdos, and winos from your marvelous Aunt Inez, who tells delightful stories and makes your favorite dumplings when you come over to visit, to your cigar smoking Uncle Ignacio, the one who always tells you that he knows for a fact that Trump won the 2020 election.

While this truism is known about friends and family, there is generally little comment about neighbors. We choose our neighborhoods, but we don’t really get to choose our neighbors. For me, it’s been a real mixed bag. I have been cursed with next-door partiers who reveled in noise and mayhem until dawn. I have also been blessed with an upstairs neighbor, a Sri Lankan immigrant, who gave me love cakes.

That being said, if I were able to choose my neighbors, the first folks on my list would be Nathan and Jessie, who have just released their latest CD Old Adobe Home. To hear their sweet songs drifting over the patio or coming from next door would be a big plus in my home life.

Nathan and Jessie are Nathan Rivera and Jessie Andra Smith, who have penned and sing the ten songs on Old Adobe Home. They both sing with ease, a down-home comfortableness that just seems to be what you would want emanating from a neighbor’s back porch. I particularly liked Smith’s singing. She has a refreshing, easy clarity to her voice that enchanted me.

Both Smith and Rivera draw on pop, the Great American Songbook, and folk traditions in their songwriting, giving this disk a wealth of variety. They also bring in a slew of musicians who add clarinet, trumpet, steel guitar, and other instruments, which further adds to the diversity of the disk.

Recorded all over the place—from Nashville to New Orleans—all the folks responsible for microphone placement and recording engineering did a stellar job. I had a fine time with Old Adobe Home in my CD player, and if Nathan and Jessie ever consider renting the apartment next to me, I’ll be the first to give them a recommendation.