Hailing from the Wisconsin Northwoods, JJ Schultz captures the lonesome middle-America landscape with the wry clarity of Nebraska era Springsteen. Schultz’s wavering vibrato captures the snap shots of everyday people surviving the life of rural America. The dusty barrooms, the front porch steps and farmer's fields are images delivered with a subtle passion that's balanced between sparse guitar picking and a poignant vocal delivery that is as distinctive as Jay Farrar and Townes Van Zandt.

Barely recovered from our first introduction to JJ Schultz' music (the slightly fantastic Bustin' Outa Town) JJ launches his second projectile our way. This time it is a band record, where, over the course of ten songs (equal shares Dylan and Haggard) and 43 minutes, our man demonstrates what Americana should sound like and what, exactly, is meant by it. One carefully chosen and brilliantly performed cover (Waits' Ol' 55) and nine of his own songs are all that's required. I know teachers who are less efficient. Whoever manages to write songs like Drinkin' You Off My Mind, with its wonderful mouth-organ and slide guitar (of Fred Odell and Scott Robertson respectively), cannot really go wrong in our books. Ol' Billy The Cab Driver changes tack completely: the drawling and emptiness ooze from the speakers. The loneliness of the man who experiences how his loved one gets to know somebody else and who is incapable of doing anything about it... we all know the feeling, but few manage to write such a beautiful song about it like Schultz did in Someone Who's Not Me. He is just as good writing from the point of view of the father who is leaving his family behind and it does not make him happy (He Drives) or from the point of view of the man who takes his own life after witnessing the death of his girlfriend (Something To Me). By showing he is capable of all of the above Schultz proves he should be ranked among today's greatest songwriters. Add the characteristic voice and the unmistakable sense for melody and you have a full package. It is time, HIGH TIME, for you to discover JJ Schultz! - MazzMuzikaS

This collection has traces of Young, Farrar, Parsons and a little Arlo Guthrie in it. With the welcome rise and rise of the American singer/songwriter showing no signs of slacking it's getting harder to pick the real talent out of the swirling mass, especially with the number of new acts emerging. It's no exaggeration to say that Schultz is definitely in with a chance of rising to the top of the pot. This excellent record provides all the elements - thoughtful, lilting tracks, an individual voice and great musicianship, but it also has that x-factor that separates the CD one might play occasionally from the one which is straight on to the MP3 player after a single listen. The record is almost entirely acoustic, and Schultz is at his strongest alone with his guitar, but refreshingly the tracks into which he imports slide guitar, violin, drums, stand-up bass, harmonica or mandolin don't feel over-produced or fleshed-out. Schultz, a Californian, is helped by a distinctive voice, complete with the odd hitch here and there (most noticeable on "Max My Dog"). Fans of the acoustic genre will almost certainly approve, and if they happen to think a song's not a song without tipping its hat to dust, dogs, love, beer and radiators they'll be all the happier. Of the ten studio and two live tracks on the record, the six-minute "Country Backroad", the story of a refrigerator repairman driving home to propose to his girlfriend, is the defining composition. There's plenty of good fare for the alt-country listener to get their teeth into, with tracks like "Song Of The Independent Rancher" and the title track "Bustin' Outa Town", and a good deal of humour too thanks to "Me And Elvis (We'd Be Friends)" and "Need A Pen". Joyfully difficult to categorise, this collection has traces of Young, Farrar, Parsons and a little Arlo Guthrie, together with the gritty American story telling of Earle and Van Zandt in it and introduces a singer/songwriter with the genuine potential to rise to the next level. - James Clark for Americana-UK (http://www.americana-uk.com)