By Brendan McDonald ’25
JD and the Stonemasons, a local folk-rock band which features two Thomas More College alumni in its lineup, recently released its second album, Two Pairs of Eyes (find it on Spotify and Apple Music). In addition to band members David Counts ’18 and James Potvin ’17, others with Thomas More connections also contributed to the album’s making.
Mr. Potvin and Mr. Counts took some time to tell us more about their new album.
JD and the Stonemasons, as well as several outside contributors to this album in particular, have Thomas More College connections. Could you describe those?
For most of our time at TMC, James Potvin and I were in the Saint John Ogilvie Folk Music Guild, and we were constantly involved in the College’s “jamming” culture. That’s really where we developed our musical style. The band draws a lot of its source material from the Folk Guild, but it’s also hard to overstate how important the informal jam sessions were.
We’ve made a point of trying to involve local musical friends in recording projects, and those friends have included a lot of Thomas More students, alumni, professors, and even clergy! In particular, the band owes a lot to the Yost family. Katherine Yost, who teaches at the College, has been very supportive of the band for years. Her sons, Senior Admissions Officer Michael Yost ’18, Peter Yost, and her daughters Maria O’Neill, Anna Yost ’26, and Sarah Yost have all been involved in recording with the band.
Two Pairs of Eyes is the band’s second album. Why the name? Which of the songs are original? What was the writing process like?
The name is an interesting story. “Two Pairs of Eyes” is the title track, and it’s essentially a folk rock song—much less traditional than the majority of our other songs. Since it sticks out like a sore thumb on the album, we thought we might as well embrace the discrepancy! Lyrically, the song is about the desire for both Divine love and human love, and how the two loves—which can sometimes seem to be in competition—are meant to be in harmony.
Like our first album, Two Pairs of Eyes includes 13 songs, 11 of which are original. The two covers are “The Fox” and “Black is the Color”—both popular folk songs. We try to err on the side of original material when we are recording, but a few of our original songs borrow melodies from traditional folk songs. As an obvious example, “Stone Walls of New England” is set to the tune of “Hard Times of Old England.” The folk tradition allows for that kind of thing (or even encourages it!), but most of our material is both lyrically and melodically new.
The writing process varies a lot by song. Generally, David Counts writes the lyrics, and we all collaborate on developing and arranging the music. Our frontman, JD Nadeau, wrote the melodies for “Let Me Drive” and “The Western Rising,” and “Up Too Much” was written by David’s twin brother, Jonathan. Ideally, as many people as possible have a hand in the creative process!
Folk musicians have the advantage (or perhaps disadvantage) of pulling from many different traditions (as an aside, do you agree with this characterization?). How does JD and the Stonemasons perform this task? For example, how do you perform folk music songs with a long tradition, such as “The Fox,” which appears on the album?
Yes, we’d definitely agree with that characterization. It can be a disadvantage, but it can also be a great opportunity as well. “The Fox” is a perfect example. Our arrangement comes from jam sessions with the Yost family. We first learned “The Fox” as an American bluegrass song; a few years later, we stumbled upon the original English version. Although they are performed at radically different tempos, each of the two versions is a gem. We couldn’t help using them both!
The mixing of different traditions happens a lot in folk music—and fairly organically. Most songs were passed along by word of mouth, and lyrics and melodies were incredibly fluid. If you tell most people that “Red is the Rose” is an Irish rewrite of the Scottish “Loch Lomond,” they get upset and call it stealing. But it isn’t stealing—it’s the way the music works. In folk music, to paraphrase Chesterton, it’s okay to steal so long as you pay back!
What goes into creating an album? Most people would be able to see why you would put a fast-paced song at the beginning (“Down Down Rollicking”), but what goes into the process or rationale of putting songs in a certain order?
Creating an album is much harder than you’d think! It takes well over a hundred times longer to make an album than to listen to it—even apart from the time spent writing the songs. If you make a mistake live, you can shrug it off. If you make a mistake in a recording, it absolutely has to be fixed. We probably spend too much time mixing, which is apparently typical for musicians. And then there’s the mastering, the album artwork and design, and the final production. It’s an exhausting process, but very rewarding.
Oddly enough, the song order for our albums is one of the last things we finalize! Generally, we record songs willy-nilly for a few months, and the album develops gradually from that. A few songs don’t make the cut, but when we have enough songs that we like, we sit down and arrange the order. You are certainly right that the opening song is important. If the first track doesn’t hit hard, people may not hang around for the second! Most good albums are dynamic; as a general rule, we try to make sure that two slow songs never happen back-to-back. I’ve seen jam sessions suffer when that happens.
Where can people find your music?
Most people listen to our music on Spotify or Apple Music, but it’s available on most major online platforms. The CD versions of the albums are available for order on Bandcamp, and we also sell them at our live shows.
For further reading:
The Ogilvie Scholarship:Preserving Music and Song at Thomas More College
