Jim Patton and Sherry Brokus craft hard-won narratives with equal measures heart (the opening “Would’t Change a Thing”) and home (“We’re Not So Different”). Proof: Pattonville. The Austin-based singer-songwriters’ excellent new album out June 1 deftly backs gritty realism (“Hard Times,” “Goodbye Joe Williams”) with regret (“Mean Old Man”) and redemption (“I Didn’t Stay Down”).

Earthy narratives framing past (“On a Hilltop by Old County Road”) and present (“Happy Family”) define the journey on Pattonville. Classic sounds provide the soundscape. “I’ve always leaned toward a Byrds- or Stones-like sound when working with a full band like what Neil Young did when bringing his folky songs to his band,” Patton says, “and then waiting to see what happened.” “The characters and themes center around real life, loneliness and sadness,” Sherry says.

Married couple Patton and Brokus originally met at a bar in Arnold, Maryland after Sherry approached Jim during a break in his set and asked if she could sing a song with his band. Jim subsequently suggested that she sing Neil Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and the two have sung together ever since. Aside from their early musical influences — Richard and Linda Thompson, the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, the Everly Brothers, and Emmylou Harris’ singing with Bob Dylan — Jim cites 20th century American literary giants, from Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Faulkner to Kerouac, Salinger and Raymond Chandler as inspirations. He also points to the friends he grew up — doctors, lawyers, waitresses, teachers, “water rats,” gravediggers and “the guy who drove the truck that emptied the port-o-pots all over the state” as the sources of his lyrical inspiration.

For radio inquiries, Jenni Finlay, Jenni Finlay Promotions: jenni@jennifinlay.com