
This Is It
by Thom JurekYou have to hand it to anybody for opening a record with a tune by the great Radney Foster. Jack Ingram does, and his 2007 issue, This Is It, certainly is. Produced by Jeremy Stover, Doug Lancio, and Ingram, the disc features 12 solid country-rockers along with videos for "Wherever You Are" and "Love You." Ingram started as a rough and rowdy Texas songwriter who had his eyes full of Steve Earle, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Townes Van Zandt, and Robert Earl Keen. At the age of 37, Ingram has grown immensely as a writer and as a performer -- he hasn't yet reached the lofty heights of his legendary forebears, but the winning is in the striving. The raw, rowdy bravado of his earlier records has given way to the more polished and sonically adventurous sound of a man who looks to the margins for hope and finds truths to be heeded in his greatest teachers: memories, bliss, and hardships. Check the Foster-penned "Measure of a Man," with its lithe...