Since the breakup of his Lexington, Ky, alt-country outfit Fifth On The Floor 10 years ago, Justin Wells has had plenty to keep him busy, including a robust family life that revolves around his two twin daughters. Cynthiana, Wells’ third solo album, is out today. Here he offers his thoughts on all 10 songs.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Little Buildings”
“The song is a pretty on-the-nose snapshot of where I was mentally when I wrote it. I was a few months past quitting drinking and was starting to realize what parts of me needed work. This and ‘Stand Anywhere But Still’ bookend the record, and both of them touch on the importance of my wife’s support. Putting down the bottle forced me to reckon with a lot of humility, and part of that is acknowledging a lot of my faults. I figured, ‘Let’s let the record start there.’”
2) “Cyclone”
“This is one of two co-writes with my dear friend Adam Lee. As can often happen, we set out to write one song, and it morphed into another. It had started as a pretty quick tune about being a fuck-up. Then we realized it wasn’t about the narrator—it was about his love. It was about her just being untethered, a vagabond, wild. When the writing took that turn, I knew it was part of this album.”
3) “Counting Days”
“This is about that brutal mental countdown somebody goes through when they’re away from their people too long. I can be out on tour having a blast and going 24/7, and there’s still that hurt of missing my person, missing the little events that happen in her life, feeling just gone. I love my work, I love traveling. But it’s perpetually bittersweet because I’m leaving my wife and daughters at home. That takes a toll.”
4) “Queen Of Queens”
“I’ve spent a good amount of time in my career trying—and failing—to write a good love song. I think it’s because you can put up this bullshit facade as an artist or just as a man. I was fresh into being off booze, and that facade was tearing down. I wanted to really put into a song what my partner means to me and honor her in a way that felt like the way we communicate—not thinking about an audience outside of us. I wanted to color that with these little Southern phrases your papaw would say—just these beautiful hyperboles whose message was clear, whether they made literal sense or not. That’s what good love feels like: beautiful and illogical.”
5) “Woman On The Run”
“I’ve told a story—one song per album across all my solo records and my records with Fifth On The Floor—about this fella I call the Traveler. I always saw him as this nameless, faceless individual who seems to just arrive one day and then just as suddenly is gone in the wind. We’ve all met that character. In the course of writing Cynthiana, I was working on a progression I immediately knew had a kinship with those earlier songs about the Traveler. I set out to write her story—the woman who’d broken his heart.”
6) “Til The Stars Won’t Burn”
“When I was younger, Matthew Ryan almost singlehandedly got me into songwriting and respecting the lyric. Over the course of my career, he’s been an inspiration and a source of sound advice, and I’ve not met too many folks who treat songs with the weight he does. Years later, when I got to write this song with him, it was one of my favorite experiences. His story about this song is his and personal. But mine is simple: It’s about commitment—something between two people that’s unending.”
7) “Up There With The Angels”
“‘Up There With The Angels’ morphed maybe a half-dozen times over the course of finishing it, but it feels more pertinent than it ever did. To me, it’s Bonnie and Clyde—us against the world, because the world’s not looking out for us. More specifically, it’s born out of a frustration with modern American politics, which seems to have less empathy than it ever did before.”
8) “Sad, Tomorrow”
“The title of the song comes from a story Nicole Kidman told Marc Maron on his WTF podcast. Kidman talked about how she often took her characters home with her, acting in front of a mirror. Her young child had grown accustomed to seeing and hearing her mother work on these roles. A day or so after Kidman’s father died, she was grieving at home, and her kid heard this. Accustomed to seeing mom go in and out of emotions while working on her acting, she asked, “Well, are you gonna be sad tomorrow?” I wanted to write this song about that feeling of helplessness you have when a friend is struggling with depression, when the only thing you can do is just be there. I ended up asking Adam to help me finish it—which was apropos, because we’d both been each other’s therapist through lockdown. It’s one of the last songs my friend Robby Cosenza played on before he passed. Robby was a Lexington icon, playing on hundreds of albums, including a Ringo Starr record and my debut album, Dawn In The Distance. He was instrumental in helping me get my legs under me when I started my solo career.”
9) “Big Benjamin”
“This one started as a song for a friend, but I ultimately realized I was writing about myself, too. It’s about tearing down the trappings of the stereotypical Southern male—about learning that the real power is in empathy and being honest with yourself. I think a lot of folks bundle those emotions into this hidden, cancerous thing inside of them. And, man, that’s no way to live.”
10) “Stand Anywhere But Still”
“‘Little Buildings’ is the literal, and ‘Stand Anywhere But Still’ is the metaphorical. I’m paraphrasing the encouragement my wife gave me when I wanted to just wallow in some bad times. It’s also jovial, because we like to give each other hell sometimes. Ultimately, it’s me saying that I’m invincible when she’s with me. With her support, there’s nothing I can’t do.”
See Justin Wells live.
